In the very next scene, Lee Crocker arrives to pick up the slack: "The Pignato Brothers are an up-and-coming crew of the Lower East Side's criminal underworld. They were penny-ante hoodlums until last year." And what made the Pignatos No. 1 with a bullet? Depositing a small time bookie into a dumpster, but not before relieving him of his eyes, nose, tongue, and several extremities. So, unpleasant fellows, these Pignatos. And Hunt declares that Vic Tyler -- Sam's dad, if you're following along at home -- will be cops' entree into the Pignatos insanely violent world. "This cretin's every shade of shady," Hunt observes of Vic. "He keeps jerking us around, we'll have a dead baby on our hands." Annie knocks and enters Hunt's office -- the parents of the kidnapped baby, the Kreshpanes, have arrived. Maybe Hunt can repeat his dead-baby prediction for their benefit.

Sam has a better, slightly less traumatizing suggestion: maybe have Vic Tyler meet the Kreshpanes so that the big softie's hard exterior is chipped away and he agrees to cooperate. Sort of like Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi, though presumably with less Emperor-killing and Ewoks. Anyhow, Vic remains unhelpful in the face of the Kreshpanes' wails for help, so Sam pulls his pops aside. "What if your son were kidnapped?" Sam asks, perhaps a trifle too pointedly. "Can you imagine being separated from him?" Because you will be, he does not continue, for, like, the next 35 years, you worthless jerk. Vic would love to help -- really, he would -- but it seems like this is the Pignatos' problem, not his. Sam tries a different tack: what if Vic ends up going to jail for something he didn't do? What happens to his wife and kid, then? Pretty much the same thing that wound up happening anyhow, I'd imagine, only with a lot more visits to Rikers for Li'l Sam. Eventually, Vic crumbles: he's expecting a phone call this afternoon from agents of the Pignatos in which they will exchange a transfer of the ransom loot. It is unclear whether he was moved by the poignancy of Sam's words or simply wanted to shut the guy up. At any rate, mission accomplished there, Sam.