Scarlet Reports Her Investigation into FBI-Mob Ties to Her Father is a turning point in Scarlet O’Bannon’s investigation: she brings her suspicions about corruption inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation to her father, Derrick O’Bannon, and proposes joining forces with him to pursue Mickey MacFarland. The meeting turns a private inquiry into a proposed collaboration, but it also makes Scarlet’s divided loyalties unmistakable. She is asking her father to trust the same mob-connected people with whom she has become personally involved.

The Investigation Behind the Meeting

In the six days before she sees her father, Scarlet meets with three agents and spends much of her remaining time researching colleagues she considers suspicious. Her attention settles on Max Smithson. At first, she regards him as a familiar kind of older professional: outwardly paternal and proud, but liable to make a pass when circumstances allow. Further digging turns that impression into a case she cannot dismiss. Smithson owns a yacht, an apartment, and a house in California, despite having no offices there. His brother works in a lower-level position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Scarlet recalls that Cormac MacKay’s men had been sent to California.

She checks Smithson’s travel history and finds that he spent his holiday time in California over the past year. His declared wealth includes a chain of local laundromats, but Scarlet cannot find a purchase history for them; the businesses appear to have been bought with no visible source of funds. Taken together, the travel, property, family connection, and unexplained assets make Smithson look to her like a possible bridge between corruption in New York and Mickey MacFarland’s operations. She suspects a network, not an isolated offender, but at this point she has a pattern of troubling clues rather than proof of every connection.

A Difficult Conversation with Derrick O’Bannon

Scarlet meets Derrick O’Bannon in a small coffee shop squeezed between larger restaurants. The room around them is noisy, yet their table feels silent. Scarlet is hungover; painkillers have eased her headache without lifting her groggy, unreal feeling. The conversation is difficult before it begins. Her father looks older than his years, his lined face and constantly worrying hands marked by grief. His green eyes match hers. For a moment, his expression seems to answer the imagined sight of Tess running toward him, then the moment passes. Scarlet finds it hard to treat him as a suspect while Tess’s death sits between them.

She nevertheless names Max Smithson and two agents she believes may be working with him: Elijah Sullivan and Gertrude Fitzgerald. Derrick calls the accusations serious and asks what evidence she has. Scarlet has to force herself through the family memories and guilt that make questioning him unlike questioning anyone else. She wonders whether he might be involved, but she does not claim to know. Instead, she asks directly whether he is working with Smithson. Derrick smiles and denies it, saying he would never betray the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His assurance does not resolve Scarlet’s suspicions; it sharpens her awareness that both her investigation and her relationship with her father depend on trust she cannot take for granted.

From Suspicion to a Proposed Alliance

Scarlet’s plan is to take Derrick to meet the informants she has been working with. She feels guilty even describing Cormac MacKay and Moira as informants, because doing so makes her feel she is betraying somebody whichever way she turns. In her account, Smithson and his associates work for Mickey MacFarland, who has recently taken over the Irish mob. She presents Cormac and Moira as two affiliates who may help the authorities capture him, not as neutral strangers untouched by the criminal world.

Derrick accepts the proposal as a sound plan: catch the mob boss and root out the people inside law enforcement who may be assisting him. That response gives Scarlet a concrete basis for bringing her father into the inquiry, even though it does not settle whether her suspicions about individual agents are correct. The proposed alliance also joins two networks that Scarlet has struggled to keep separate: the Bureau, where her father serves, and the mob connections that give her access to information about Mickey.

Later, when Scarlet and Moira have been taken, Derrick is present with the search party in Flint’s car. Flint studies a photograph and points out two towers reflected in a mirror, using their angle to argue that the captives are at the ballroom. The later scene does not establish the truth of every suspicion Scarlet raised at the coffee shop, but it shows Derrick acting alongside the people she had offered to bring him to meet, as the investigation becomes an urgent effort to find them.

Family Grief and Divided Loyalty

The meeting’s personal stakes surface most plainly as Derrick prepares to leave. Scarlet tells him that she tried to save Tess, repeating the admission rather than turning their conversation into a clean exchange of evidence and plans. Her investigation has required her to look at her father as a possible suspect, but her grief prevents that scrutiny from becoming emotionally detached. The event therefore leaves two kinds of uncertainty in place: whether the suspected corruption can be proved, and whether Scarlet can work with her father without feeling that she has betrayed either him or Cormac and Moira.

Scarlet’s decision to bring Derrick into the inquiry is not simply a transfer of information. It is a test of whether formal procedure and family trust can operate beside the dangerous, personal relationships on which her investigation now depends. His agreement opens the way to cooperation, while her parting words about Tess reveal the loss that neither the investigation nor the proposed alliance can put aside.