'The Lowdown' Episode 3 Recap: Did Lee Get Hold Of Dale Washberg’s Books?

FX’s new detective thriller series The Lowdown continues to impress with its 3rd episode this week, after having gotten off to a solid start with its premiere episodes, setting up an intriguing plot with touches of humor. Local ‘truthstorian’ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Lee Raybon had been tremendously piqued by the sudden suicide of Dale Washberg, an unusual member of the wealthy and revered Washberg family. Multiple clues suggested that Dale had been killed by his own family because of his habit of disagreeing with them in every aspect,particularly his elder brother, Donald, a businessman and politician by profession. In The Lowdown episode 3, Lee Raybon goes to great lengths to secure Dale’s collection of Jim Thompson detective novels, inside which the man had hidden an extensive note detailing the nature and reason of his death.

Spoiler Alert

Does Lee Get Hold Of Dale Washberg’s Books?

After having realized that Dale’s personal collection of books in his study contained crucial information required to solve the mystery surrounding his death, Lee had asked his lawyer friend, Ray, to buy the books from the Washberg estate, since he had been forced out of the place during the sale. Incidentally, the woman overseeing the sale, Nikki, happens to be a realtor as well, and Lee finds out from her that someone other than Ray had ended up buying the books. Since he had already paid Ray for the favor, at least indirectly, Lee calls up the lawyer for clarification, and the latter initially lies about not being in town. But when cornered and confronted, he reveals that a private collector named Catalina Estragon had already managed to buy the whole collection. Lee refuses to give up on the trail of the books, as they are the only clues regarding Dale’s unusual death, and so he demands that Ray take him to Catalina’s residence in Lake Keystone so that he can make a deal with her.

Ray is initially not pleased to accompany Lee and his daughter, Francis, to Lake Keystone, as he admittedly has a beef with Catalina, whom he refers to as a ‘literal witch.’ It is evident that Ray and Catalina have clashed on multiple occasions, seemingly at estate sales and auctions, because of which they have developed a rivalry with each other. He even reveals that he had had Catalina barred from the antiques scene in Tulsa, possibly because of her ability to sell antique wares to customers fairly easily. However, he does not have any option but to tag along with the protagonist, who does not want to let the lawyer loose once again. Ray reveals more about the woman they are going to meet, Catalina, who had married a poacher and moved in with him at Lake Keystone, and is currently living in a houseboat. Ray does not have a respectful opinion about Catalina’s personal life either, saying that she had married her husband only to get hold of a green card and become a legal American citizen.

As the three reach Lake Keystone, they go to a nearby diner for a few drinks, when Lee hatches a quick plan on how to approach Catalina, based on the information he has about the woman. Ray makes it clear that she will never sell the books to him if she realizes how eagerly he wants to own them, as that is just how Catalina is. But Lee knows that her husband is a poacher, with whom she apparently lives on the houseboat, and so when a US Fish & Wildlife Service officer casually leaves his jacket at his table at the diner for a quick washroom break, Lee sets out on his mission. He grabs the jacket and starts pretending to be a sheriff from the Fish & Wildlife Service, Agent Cooper. Under this new identity, he visits the boathouse but finds it to be surprisingly empty. Taking a closer look through the boat, Lee finds cartons full of caviar tins, all packed and ready to be exported, before he finds someone standing on the deck. But as Lee approaches this man, he does not even realize that it is actually just a mannequin, and a different man sneaks up on him and takes him down with a quick blow to the head.

Minutes later, when Lee regains consciousness, he is being dragged to a camp somewhere away from the lake by the same goon who had hit him earlier. In his pursuit of the Jim Thomson novels that had once belonged to Dale Washberg, Lee gets entangled in a criminal network dealing in fake caviar, owned and run by a local poacher, Marlon. As becomes clear later on, Marlon and his brother have been running an illegal, and fairly successful, business of harvesting roe from paddlefish, packaging them in fancy cans, and selling them as expensive caviar to various dealers overseas. Since most people cannot tell the difference between the roe from American paddlefish and sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, Marlon is able to make sales for a very steep price by simply making it seem like authentic caviar. Naturally, a pesky Fish & Wildlife Service agent snooping around his boathouse is seen as a threat, and so Marlon’s brother abducts Lee and takes him to the safehouse. Lee tries to claim he is not really a sheriff or an agent, but nobody believes him.

What does Donald ask Marty to do?

Back in Tulsa, the private investigator that Donald Washberg had hired, Marty, continues working for the family, although he takes a break from following around Lee Raybon, who had been his original target. It is Donald who asks him to temporarily stop his pursuit of the journalist so that the PI can carry out a different favor for him. Firstly, the politician offers Marty a sweet deal, stating that he will have the PI become the head of his security detail if, or rather when, he wins the upcoming elections and becomes the new governor of Oklahoma. Then, he explains the rather personal mission that Marty has to set out on, which involves talking to Dale’s mourning widow, Betty Jo, to vacate the estate ranch that she has been living in since her marriage, and even offering her a compensation amount to agree to this indirect eviction.

Despite having an affair with Betty Jo for a long time, Donald Washberg now suddenly wants to evict her from the family estate and obviously cut all romantic ties with her. He decides to do so either to benefit his political career, as having an illicit affair with his sister-in-law is just too scandalous, or because of the money he can earn through the estate house, or possibly both of the above. Therefore, he now sends Marty to Betty’s house with this message and also a meager compensation of 10,000 dollars as a gift to her and her daughter, Pearl. This is extremely disrespectful to the woman, who had clearly played along with Donald’s romantic advances only to better her situation, and not out of any serious feelings for him.

However, there is nothing that Betty can do about Donald’s decision, at least for now, as Marty very clearly explains the situation to her. In the prenuptial agreement that Betty had signed, she had technically agreed to a clause that mentioned that she can essentially be evicted from the estate ranch at any time by the other party. While she had believed that the ‘other party’ with whom she was making the agreement was her husband, Dale, in reality it was the family trust with whom the agreement had been made. As Donald is the head of the family trust, and he wants Betty Jo gone from the estate, she is legally bound to leave as per the prenuptial agreement. Donald tries to make it seem as if he is doing the widow and her daughter a favor by relieving them of the heavy expenses of maintaining the ranch by helping them settle into a different house elsewhere. 

But Betty Jo refuses to listen and to take the compensation money either, as she literally throws the cash all over the porch and goes back into her house, making it clear that she cannot be moved so easily. It seems like she has some sort of proof of her affair with Donald, which she will be ready to use to blackmail him, and Betty will evidently be a very important character in the series. Marty, on the other hand, is intelligent and sensitive enough to understand that his boss is making him do his dirty work, but the PI keeps playing along for now, possibly for his professional betterment. However, Marty can be expected to switch sides in the upcoming episodes of The Lowdown, when his conscience will catch up to him eventually.

Why does Allen Murphy visit Marty?

The Lowdown episode 3 confirms that it was Allen Murphy who had killed the Neo-Nazi skinheads responsible for having kidnapped Lee Raybon, as we see the man disassemble his gun to remove evidence at the very beginning of this episode. Later on, he makes another threatening visit just like at the end of the previous episode, and this time his target is the private investigator, Marty. Allen had figured out that Marty was possibly the only witness to his crime, since the PI had been tailing Lee the whole time. However, we were earlier given the impression that Allen did not know that the Neo-Nazis had abducted Lee and brought him to his camp, which does not seem to be the case.

Now it looks like Allen had ordered the goons to kidnap the journalist and bring him to the camp as part of a more complex and manipulative plan. He had then killed the two goons and purposefully left Lee inside the trunk of the car, either to ensure that the journalist would eventually die, or to give him the chance to make a lucky escape and divert his attention towards this failed kidnapping. As Lee had openly blamed Donald Washberg for having him kidnapped back at Dale’s funeral, Allen had grown suspicious that Marty might have actually seen him commit the crime. Therefore, Allen gives Marty a visit at a local coffee shop, essentially to scare him into ignoring anything he might have noticed from that fateful day. But Marty does not seem affected at all, and this all the more makes it seem likely that the private investigator might soon team up with the journalist and work together in exposing the dark secrets of the Washberg family.

Did Lee make it out of the criminal hideout?

While held hostage at the illegal caviar harvesting and packaging facility, Lee fears that he might not be able to make it out alive, as Marlon threatens to kill him, with the poacher still believing him to be a park ranger. But Lee once again uses his supreme observational skills and his convincing nature to slither out of the dangerous situation after he realizes that Marlon and Catalina are no longer together. Catalina had left Marlon after supposedly taking away a lot of his money, and his houseboat too, much to his dismay, as he still genuinely loves the woman. From this conversation, Lee figures out that there is a sentimental side to Marlon that he can exploit and also realizes how the poacher prioritizes family over everything else. Therefore, Lee decides to come clean to the brothers and reveals how he is actually a writer who has only been in search of a collection of books for a specific reason.

Although the criminals are initially unconvinced by Lee’s claims, his superb qualities as a narrator come in handy, as he tells them a long tale about his struggles with drugs in his life. The reason for this discussion is the fact that Marlon and his brother expressed their disinterest in drugs because of the difficult nature of the trade. By the end of the story, Lee also shares how he loves his only daughter, Francis, and does not want to let her down in any way. He does not hesitate to suggest that if he is killed at the criminal hideout, Francis will be left to suffer the consequences of a rough life without a father, and it is enough to make Marlon change his mind.

But there is one last favor that Lee has to do for Marlon in order to be freed by the criminals and even be dropped off at the lake by them, which he is more than happy to carry out. As he still loves his ex-wife with all his heart, Marlon wants to communicate his feelings to Catalina but does not know how to do so. Thus, he asks for the help of Lee, and the protagonist writes a lofty and poetic letter for Marlon, addressed to Catalina, in which he helps the poacher express his true feelings of reuniting with her. Absolutely thrilled by his use of words, Marlon lets Lee free and allows him to go back to his daughter, who is supposedly waiting for him at the diner.

How does Francis’ resourcefulness save the day?

A lot had happened with Francis since Lee had left her in the company of Ray at the diner, as she had decided to sneak out to try and help her father. Ray had already had way too much alcohol, making him useless in the intense situation, and Francis had herself found the address where Catalina sold her antique wares. She had even located the box full of books from Dale Washberg’s study but had been caught by Catalina for having snuck into her shop. Just like her father, Francis first tried to sell a lie and then managed to somehow impress Catalina through her confident nature. Finally, when the woman was temporarily out of the room, Francis had picked up the box of books and fled from the shop, taking it back to the diner so that Ray could drive her away from the place.

However, Catalina catches up to her first and snatches away the box of books with the help of an associate. She believes that Ray had made Francis sneak into her shop to steal the books, and out of her vindictive nature, she simply burns the books to ensure that Ray would never be able to own them. This is when Lee gets to reunite with his daughter and friend, but he is absolutely heartbroken to see the books in ashes. There is one final twist in the episode, though, as Francis reveals that she had carefully gone through each of them and removed all the pieces of paper that Dale had hidden in them, since Lee had already told her about how he needed the hidden messages in the books and not the books themselves. Thus, it is Francis’ intelligence and resourcefulness that save the day for Lee, and as the father and daughter start reading the letters, they both imagine Dale Washberg sitting beside them to tell his story, which proves how Francis shares the same level of interest in digging up the truth as her father does. 

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