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| “ | Keep your hands off the goods! | „ |
| ~ Keyes while murdering Henry Ware |
Foster Keyes is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Can I Get a Witness?". He is a drug dealer who murders a rival dealer as revenge for attacking his girlfriend.
He was portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman.
Early life[]
Keyes is a drug dealer and a thief who commands fear and respect in his neighborhood, even though the people in his community privately dislike him for his ruthlessness; at one point, he even steals a Gameboy from a child. He has a glass eye resulting from one of his eyes getting gouged out in a fight. It turns a milky color when he tries to wash it, giving him a sinister appearance that adds to his fearsome reputation.
As a teenager, he was arrested several times for dealing drugs and served a stint in a juvenile detention center. At one point, he was arrested and charged with felony drug dealing, but he managed to serve only a year in prison before returning to the street.
Shortly before the events of the episode, Keyes' girlfriend Janette Richardson made fun of his rival dealer, Henry "Big Boy" Ware, for making a pass at her. Enraged, Ware slapped her. When Janette told Keyes what happened, he swore revenge.
"Can I Get a Witness?"[]
Keyes finds Ware hanging out at a park near his house and shoots him dead in broad daylight, while shouting, "Keep your hands off the goods!", referring to Janette. He then takes off on his bicycle and hides out at Janette's house.
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green investigate Ware's murder, looking for a young Black man with felony drug dealing convictions and a glass eye. After interviewing dozens of people answering that description, they knock on Keyes' door, but he is not there. Two neighborhood children, including the little boy whose Gameboy Keyes stole, point them to Janette's apartment. There, they find him hiding in her closet and arrest him.
Keyes denies killing Ware, but two eyewitnesses, teenagers Shayna Rosario and Jimmy Gordon, identify him as the murderer, giving Briscoe and Green enough evidence to arrest him for second-degree murder. The case is dependent on their testimony, so Keyes has his cousin Ronald "Slug" Duggan intimidate them with threatening phone calls. Shayna suddenly backs out of testifying, but Jimmy stands up to Keyes, identifying him in court as Ware's murderer even as Keyes glares at him.
Later that day, however, hitman Calvin Rivers kills Jimmy on Keyes' orders. The trial judge excludes his testimony because Keyes is now unable to confront his accuser, resulting in the case against him being dismissed.
Briscoe and Green search through Keyes' visitors in jail and in court for a possible hit man. They eventually find Duggan, a convicted felon who had been twice charged with murder and bank robbery, only for the witnesses against him to disappear, and to whom they had briefly spoken while looking for Keyes. Duggan provides an alibi, but Briscoe and Green suspect him of having an underling do his dirty work. When they investigate Calvin Rivers, a petty criminal who participated in one of his robberies, they find a gun and a stack of cash and arrest him for Jimmy's murder.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn offer Rivers a reduced prison sentence if he testifies against Keyes and Duggan, but he refuses, fearing for his life if he crosses Keyes. McCoy and Southerlyn persuades Shayna to testify, however, which allows Briscoe and Green to arrest Keyes and Duggan for Jimmy's murder.
During the trial, Shayna reveals that a man threatened her before finally paying her not to testify. When McCoy asks her if Duggan was that man, however, Keyes and Duggan both stare menacingly at her, frightening her so that she refuses to respond. She tells the judge that someone had called her that morning and threatened to kill her if she testified, and that Duggan had taken her to see his lawyer, Gerard Wills, who had bribed her.
Shayna, now under police protection, testifies again, this time identifying Duggan and Wills as the men who threatened and bribed her, respectively. Despite her testimony, however, the jury finds Keyes and Duggan not guilty of murder and witness intimidation, leaving Rivers to take the fall for all their crimes.
