WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, Episode 4, "For A Few Leke More" which premiered Thursday, October 7th on NBC.
Law & Order: Organized Crime opens with a flashback to Detective Elliot Stabler's undercover work with Albi Briscu, Reggie and the rest of the KO Albanian gang, as well as Albi's wife taking a romantic interest in him and Stabler's accidental uncovering of Albi's secret homosexuality. Undercover as Eddie Wagner, in the present, Stabler shares The Count of Monte Cristo with his favorite waitress at the diner. Then Reggie and Stabler play poker with acquaintances as Reggie complains about the Marcy Killers. One of the players is interested in Stabler's ideas, but taunts him about being satisfied with arson insurance schemes and for being a poor judge of character in his prior life. Going all in, Stabler wins big at the game.
Back at the diner, Stabler is worried his regular waitress isn't at work. When another one appears, one of the men from the poker game berates her for his order being slightly wrong and Stabler defends her. That infuriates the other guy, who questions Stabler's loyalty and identity. To cover (and because he secretly enjoys unhinged moments), Stabler beats him up. Reggie then tells Stabler that he should be worried -- the man he beat up, Luca, is the fiancé of gang leader Costa's eldest daughter's.
Jet "Sloot" Slootmaekers hands out encrypted devices disguised as cell phones to the squad, courtesy of Malachi, the hacker from last week that they currently have in custody. These phones give them the ability to send all texts channel securely through their task force server, which will decrypt the coded messages in real-time. Their job, now, is to get those phones into the hands of the KO, so the police will have unencrypted access to every one of the KO gang's messages. They plan to make the KO gang think their old phones are compromised and set up Malachi as the new sole distributor of the "secure" phones.
Costa wants to see Stabler, meanwhile, and Reggie is worried. He tries to pay Stabler (Eddie Wagner) off to run away to keep him safe. He says he's seen Costa retaliate horribly against his own father before and he wants his friend to be safe. Stabler talks with Sgt. Ayana Bell before the meeting with Costa and she reprimands him for going too rogue. She forbids him from keeping his appointment with Costa, as Costa will likely kill him. He insists, though, and she compromises by saying they'll surveil him.
Stabler makes a quick pit stop by his apartment to talk with his son, Eli, and check in on his ailing mother who is living at the apartment and whose memory seems to be getting worse. Worried he might not come back, he hugs his son and tells him how proud he is of him. He then leaves a message on his star-crossed love's, Captain Olivia "Liv" Benson, phone. He thanks her for all she's done for him over the years and calls her his rock. He starts to say "when I said that I love you-" before time runs out and his message is cut short. He goes to record it again but chickens out instead and hangs up.
Sgt. Bell and Sgt. Brewster wait outside Costa's gym, watching Stabler enter for his appointment with Costa -- and with fate. They, rightfully, insinuate he's crazy. Inside, Costa speaks to Stabler, telling him they've been overly generous with him up until now. Costa leans into his Godfather aesthetic as he interrogates Stabler over assaulting Luca. Stabler (Wagner) says he would do it again, too, because Luca questioned his loyalty and his reputation. Costa reminds Stabler that he is not, in fact, one of them. He says he doesn't care if Reggie vouches for him - but he does care that Albi has vouched for him. Stabler acting as Albi's confidante has paid off already in Albi's protection. Costa warns him, though, that if Stabler does it again, he won't let it slide. He then escorts Stabler outside and confides in him that he, too, thinks Luca is a prick but he still needs Stabler to make it right. In order to do so, he wants Stabler to take part in an important upcoming hit.
News coverage shows Sloot arresting the KO's current phone distributor, paving the way for Malachi to swoop in and hook them up with new phones. Meanwhile, Stabler thanks Albi for his protection and Albi tells him that there's an Albanian boxer set to fight in Atlantic City with a lot of money being bet on him. The boxer came to Costa and said he was told to take a dive. Costa reiterates the order to throw the fight. Stabler's job, then, is to collect the betting earnings -- and also rob the bookie.
Stabler reports to Bell and Brewster about his upcoming robbery mission and they brainstorm the best course of action. Stabler says not to worry about it, he's going to go through with the robbery. Brewster notes that he sounds a little too excited about that prospect and Bell says she's worried about where Stabler's head is at while he's on the job. Back at Costa's gym, Albi turns on the news and sees the arrest by Sloot. They now know that the phones they use have been compromised, taking the bait for the new tech guy, Malachi, to enter the fold. Until then, though, Malachi is content to both annoy and flirt with Sloot. They then get a notification that nearly every criminal organization has placed an order with Malachi and they're about to have bugged phones inside almost every gang in the city.
Albi's wife, Flutura Briscu, who has a thing for Eddie Wagner (a.k.a. Stabler), finds him in the gym and shamelessly flirts with him. She blatantly invites him over while Albi's away. Later, Stabler indeed swings by to see Flutura. As she flirts with him, she gets a call. When she walks out of the room, Stabler slips crushed sleeping pills into her drink. She returns and downs it in one gulp before kissing him -- and then passing out. Stabler leaves her there to search her house. He finds passports and documents of trafficked minors and takes pictures. When he walks back to the living room, he sees Albi returning home, so he grabs his drink, the only evidence he was there, and slips out the back.
Back at his Eddie Wagner trailer, he grabs the gun he got from Costa and heads out. Bell, Sloot and Brewster stake out the bar that Stabler and the gang are set to rob while Detective Carlos Maldonado reports on the situation from the inside, pretending to be just a bar patron. The gang pulls up in balaclavas and rushes into the bar, but a civilian sees and calls 911. A police car was, unfortunately, in the area and responds to the report. Stabler and the men hold the bar owner up at gunpoint and clean out his safe. Reggie gets bold and removes his mask to taunt the man, while Stabler urges them to leave. Bell tries to stall for time by ramming the cop car. The KO gang's exit is impeded, though, by a bar patron and Eliott Stabler, unsurprisingly too deep in the moment, shoots him. Maldonado confirms to a horrified Brewster and Sgt. Bell that Stabler was the shooter.
Reggie assures Stabler that he did the right thing by shooting that man, and tells him Costa is going to be happy. He'll take the cash back and instructs Stabler to torch the van. Stabler comes into the office and says he had no choice in the matter, that the guy pulled a gun on him. Thankfully, Maldonado got it on camera, including the man primed to shoot Stabler. It turns out the man had open warrants for felonies. Stabler talks with Bell about the documents he sent over and they confirm they're worried about human trafficking. He also says he's worried about his missing waitress -- and that her passport was among the documents. Bell suggests they bring in SVU to help, setting up next week's crossover storyline.
Back at Eddie Wagner's trailer, Flutura comes for a visit. Stabler says he feels bad about leaving her in that state the other night and she instead thanks him for not taking advantage of her. Stabler remarks that she showed up at his place in Albi's car and she says Albi used hers. Stabler pushes her up against the trailer and they make out, because he's super committed to the undercover job. They go in to have sex and the episode ends. Stabler's looking less and less stable, as his name should suggest, so it's likely the worst of his spiral is yet to come.
New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime air Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.