Why did the hitman kill this character in Bosch, Season 7 Episode 6?

Question

In Season 7 of Bosch a wealthy criminal named Rogers has been implicated in a crime by a lesser criminal named Franzen. Franzen has given his story to his lawyer, Chandler, and is set to testify to the DA about Rogers' illegal activities as part of a deal to get himself out of trouble. Rogers gets his lawyer, Folks, to hire a hitman to assassinate Franzen (so he cannot testify) and Chandler (because if Franzen dies, she could then testify about what he told her as admissible hearsay). The hitman kills Franzen and puts Chandler in a coma where her recovery looks doubtful.

Then in Episode 6, Rogers and his lawyer Folks learn that Bosch's daughter Maddie was present when Franzen told his story to Chandler, so they call the hitman back to kill her as well before she can testify as to what Franzen said. But before the hitman makes the attempt on Maddie's life, he murders Folks.

There is a throwaway line between two detectives about Folks being killed because he was a "liability," but this explanation seems very thin. Folks was fully involved in the hiring of the assassin who murdered Franzen and shot Chandler, and thus is as culpable in those crimes as Rogers. In addition, he has attorney-client privilege and cannot be compelled to testify about anything Rogers told him. Worse, by having his lawyer murdered by the same hitman, Rogers only brings the crimes even closer to his own doorstep.

So how was Folks a liability to Rogers? Or did they mean that Folks was a liability to the hitman? And if that was the case, how? Folks did not even know what the hitman looked like.

Answer 1

I think the problem for the mob is that Fowkkes is not actually part of their organization, he's merely an independent crooked lawyer, and now he has confirmation that these mobsters have a totally-for-real hitman who can and will murder billionaires. And he's in the center of an absolute firestorm of a big-money SEC case.

I think the second phone call for another hit prompted his mob contact to look hard at Fowkkes' situation, and they concluded that the Rogers case is so high-profile that it guarantees federal agents will squeeze Fowkkes hard to figure out why all his client's enemies end up conveniently murdered. And they didn't trust Fowkkes to not rat them out to save himself, because he's not "family" and hasn't had loyalty drilled into him for decades. In fact, he's a pampered pansy coward who would probably sell his own mother into prostitution to avoid spending one night in jail. The feds will simply snap him in two and dump out all the candy evidence.

It's also pretty clear to the mob that Fowkkes is in an impossible situation, and evidently his whole plan is to have people murdered until the sky clears, which is not going to work. First he murders the star witness against his client, plus the witness' lawyer. Now he wants to murder the lawyer's assistant. Who's next?! The lead detective investigating the case? The process-server who tries to subpoena him?? The clerk who takes Fowkkes' phone records into evidence???

There's a great line in the movie Jack Reacher, where a bad guy justifies his murder-spree by saying, "we have a way of doing things so they stay done." Fowkkes is doing the opposite, and he seems to think that the law will have no way of tracing all these deaths simply because he and his buddy use burner phones and place their calls at night (gasp!).

The mob was willing to lend their hitman to Fowkkes at first, but his subsequent use of that tool has proved reckless and is practically guaranteed to blow back on the mob. Killing Fowkkes won't magically make the police forget about all the other murders, but it does eliminate the weakest link in the chain that leads from the Rogers case to the mob.

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The part that puzzles me is why the hitter bothered to try to kill Maddie. The Rogers case is not the mob's problem; if Rogers gets convicted, he goes to jail but the mobsters don't. The only problem that impacts the mob is that the mobster who connected Fowkkes with the hitman is party to two counts of murder-for-hire. When Fowkkes dies, the mob loses its stake in the Rogers trial (their stake being: Fowkkes is paying them for the use of their hitman in connection with that trial). So when they decided to kill Fowkkes, they should have instructed their hitman to kill Fowkkes and dispose of any evidence in Fowkkes' home that he was connected to the mob, and then go back to mobville. Only Rogers benefits from Maddie's death, and sending someone to kill her just creates more risk of discovery and more data that investigators can use to trace the hitman and his patrons.

Answer 2

Bosch: Legacy (A Bosch Spin-Off Series) continues the Carl Rogers plot thread...

It is revealed that Rogers is caught up in a scheme with the Russian Mob, and that Rogers ultimately exposes the Russian Mob's illegal exploits, which includes stolen gasoline. It's also revealed that he owes them money!

Here's Transcript from 01x02 ("Pumped") with Harry Bosch & Honey Chandler figuring out how Carl Rogers was in association with the Russian Mob and what his "Wall Street" connection was really referring to, which is the fashion district of LA. This was based on Harry listening to a changed testimony of another character on video tape.

Chandler: The D.A. couldn't find any linkage between Rogers and Wall Street, much less the Russian mafia.

Video Plays: "Carl Rogers makes most of his nut on Wall Street."

Harry Bosch: You think maybe he meant Wall Street here in Los Angeles?

Chandler: The Fashion District?

Harry Bosch: It's mobbed up.

Chandler: Huh. Never even occurred to me.

Harry Bosch: Call it a hunch.

So to better answer your question, everyone probably exposes the Russian Mob...