"That's what happens when you don't play the game," Carling sneers at Sam, who is no mood to be lectured right now, least of all by Ray Carling. "If you had done your job," he shouts back at Carling, "she'd still be alive." Fight! Fight! The other detectives eventually manage to pull them apart, presumably saving the next fight until after school in the playground. Hunt, meanwhile, looks pissed -- I believe we have achieved the Gene Hunt Unleashes Merciless Justice portion of our program.

Indeed, when we return from commercials, Hunt is swilling from a hip flask and guiltily recounting to Sam the tale of his first job on the force -- pounding a beat with an officer named Edwin Brooks. In those days, Hunt explains, there were some bad apples on the force, and Edwin ratted one of them out. For his heroic efforts, he was shunned by his fellow officers and eventually committed suicide. Hunt, on the other hand, kept his mouth shut and became the fine paragon of moral virtue you see before you today. There's an important lesson there -- snitches get stitches. No, wait... that's a horrible lesson. Let's go with "It's never too late to set things right." That's far less depressing. Anyhow, Hunt tries not to think about poor Eddie Brooks. And when he does, it's "like there's an animal eating away at my insides." Sam wonders if Hunt would like to do something about that feeling. "Thought you'd never ask," Hunt replies. Merciless Justice, away!

And so as The Hollies sing about the relative merits of long cool women in black dresses, Hunt and Sam show up at Casso's club and kick in the ornate door to his private office. Once inside, they find the drugs in the credenza, just as the Deus Ex Hooker promised. "You think there aren't going to be consequences for this, Hunt?" Casso fumes. Let's just say that Hunt is unconcerned -- especially since he can always make sure that Casso's future cellmates can find out about the mobster's police-informant moonlighting. "Rikers is going to be crawling with some very pissed off people that [Casso and Profaci] that these two snitched off to you, Lieutenant Hunt," Sam says a bit smugly. Then he notices something that makes him feel decidedly less smug -- among the herd of floozies rapidly dispersing from Casso's office is Rose. Moooooooooom? Well, how do you think she was planning on settling her debt, genius? Rose protests to a shocked Sam that she's never done anything like this before and nothing happened anyway. "I was scared for Sammy," she sobs. Oh sure -- twist that knife, why don't you? Sam tells her to go home and kiss her son goodnight. He does not add, "with your filthy, filthy mouth!" which I think is a sign of his remarkable restraint. "Your mother must be very proud," a grateful Rose says. Sam gets all teary-eyed.