The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  In short, they would like to expand the project to the entire eighth grade. The superintendent doesn’t disagree that progress has been made, but hasn’t the courage to do the right thing in the face of the deficit.

  “If City Hall were to sign off on this, we could go forward … but now is not the time to rock any boats.”

  At the abandoned playground, Bunk and Freamon take in the big picture, the little picture, the whole picture. Freamon notices that it is surrounded on three sides by vacant rowhouses and heads up to the back of one for a closer look.

  The plywood on the rear door is so weathered that it comes loose with a little bit of hand pressure. Lester keeps moving down the row, checking the plywood until he comes to one secured with machine-drive nails.

  “This a tomb,” he says. “Lex is in there.”

  episode forty-nine

  “THAT’S GOT HIS OWN”

  “That all there is to it?”

  – BUBBLES

  Directed by Joe Chappelle

  Story by Ed Burns & George Pelecanos; teleplay by George Pelecanos

  Call it paint-ball for apprentice assassins.

  Chris Partlow and Snoop put Michael through a training program in a vacant warehouse. When the boy moves toward Chris – sweating and bleeding after being chased by Michael – he is asked by his panting victim what the next move is.

  “One to the head, I keep it quick,” says Michael.

  “Not yet, motherfucker,” says Snoop, pleased with their protégé. “You shoot live rounds like paint, boy, you gonna be the shit.”

  The results of such attention to detail – the badly decomposed body of Lex – is examined by crime lab techs as Lester Freamon looks on.

  However his supervisor, Sergeant Landsman, still rolls with the stats and says: “Do you see a tool belt on me?

  “Three weeks left in the year, our unit clearance rate is under 50 percent. We do not go looking for bodies, especially moldering John Does.”

  He then issues an order not to “pull down any more fucking wood.”

  A launched-into-orbit Carcetti bitches at a city budget meeting over the $54 million school deficit.

  “I just ran a clean-up-the-streets campaign,” he says when the only suggestions call for scaling back services in an already cash-strapped municipality “… and I just got done promising the world to every cop in the city.”

  Nerese Campbell says the only answer is to go to Annapolis, see the governor, and “beg his Republican ass.”

  Omar and Renaldo follow Cheese to a meet with Marlo’s people, where a runner hands Prop Joe’s nephew a book bag of cash: 25 large for what they were short before and $150k to re-up.

  When Cheese says he’s not sure if there will be enough coming off the boat for all that Marlo wants, he’s told: “Short someone else.”

  Co-op, indeed.

  In the Major Crimes Unit, Freamon and his new crew – which includes Herc, Sydnor, and Dozerman – watch as Marimow, the department hack, packs up.

  They are silent and somewhat smug about it: live by the petty political sword, die by the petty political sword. As soon as Marimow is gone, they laugh their asses off.

  And then Freamon calls the shot: Marlo is still the target. Landsman won’t let him chase the murders – if a body falls in West Baltimore does anyone hear it? – but they can follow the dope.

  When Colvin tells the Deacon the research project has been killed by the school system, the preacher tells him to tell Delegate Watkins about it, a play Colvin was hoping to make.

  At the “a-rabber” stables – the spot where men who sell fruit and vegetables from horse-drawn carts meet – Bubbles consults with the elders of the street for advice on how to rid himself of the Fiend.

  The answer: lace a shot of dope with sodium cyanide.

  Says one of the sages, “Ain’t no thing to kill a nigger if he’s already ’bout the business of killin’ hisself.”

  In the Missing Persons Unit, where budget cuts have kept the sole detective off the street and buried under paperwork, Freamon finds photos and paperwork on Lex and Little Kevin.

  When Namond tells Michael that Kenard reported his stash stolen, Michael soon concludes that he’s being played and Kenard kept the dope.

  “And now,” says Michael, “you gotta step to him, put somethin’ real behind them words.” Later, Namond’s mother will concur, saying he should have made Kenard “feel pain,” that he is no chip off the old block.

  When Namond reminds her that his father is in prison – thus making it difficult for him to measure up – his mother gives him a whack.

  In the midst of telling Butchie that he’s rounding up a crew to go after Marlo, but he’s going to “go subtle,” Omar gets a call from Kimmy. She’s looking for work.

  At the State House in Annapolis, where he arrives hat in hand for his broken school system, Carcetti is made to wait more than an hour for a governor who, sensing Tommy will go after his job in two years, has publicly questioned “local oversight of the system.”

  Tired of waiting when one hour starts eating into two, Carcetti is about to walk out of the State House when he is finally summoned for his meeting.

  When the kids in Colvin’s special class are told they need to study for the statewide test to keep moving ahead, Darnell Tyson retorts: “I ain’t movin’ nowhere but out this motherfucker.”

  Namond adds that now they aren’t any different than the kids learning worthless shit in the other classrooms. Colvin cannot disagree.

  Going around Landsman the way he is wont to go around whatever stands in the way of a good investigation, Freamon explains the vacant house burial grounds to Daniels and Pearlman: he can link Lex to at least two other murders by Marlo via the wire that was prematurely shut down.

  Prez sits with a depressed Dukie, trying to persuade the boy that high school is the next right thing. He is less than convincing; the argument that anything is worth doing is further voided when Dukie comes home to see an eviction notice and all of his family’s belongings on the street.

  Once more, the rent went to the dope man.

  Michael invites Dukie to live with him and Bug in the very nice accommodations provided by his new employer, Marlo Stanfield.

  Daniels shares Freamon’s idea that there is a connection between the missing persons and the bodies found in the vacant houses and adds that it would be prudent if it came out now so the murders would be attributed to the last year of the Royce administration.

  When Rawls comments that Daniels is now thinking like a political animal, Daniels replies: “I’m learning as I go.”

  “I bet you fucking are,” says Rawls, ordering Daniels to keep the conversation between the two of them.

  As they speak, Freamon is betting Bunk that they’ll find bodies in any vacant house with matching nails in the plywood. It’s a bet that Freamon wins easily.

  Namond asks Michael to go with him to confront Kenard about the missing dope. When questioned, he tells Namond, “Package up my ass, Gump.”

  When Namond hesitates, Michael beats the shit out of the kid with a fury new to Namond. When Michael then tells Namond to grab the package and go, the wanna-be corner boy runs away.

  Back in the vacant houses, Freamon declines to call the crime lab on the new corpses: until the bosses say there are bodies, there will be no bodies.

  Carcetti gives the green light to begin hauling them out. Adamant that the department no longer play fast and loose with statistics, he is pleased that the murders will fall at the end of Royce’s watch and not in January when he takes office.

  The work of opening up all the vacants sealed with airtight plywood, will take some extra manpower and Daniels tells Freamon to pick two people he wants from CID.

  Carver stops by Randy’s house but the boy’s guardian – “Miss Anna” Jeffries, his foster mother (played by Denise Hart), says they want to wait a while longer before he goes back to school.

  Carver, invited to stay for breakfast
, assures her that the snitching brouhaha will blow over in a week or two.

  When Bubbles awakes in the derelict rowhouse he and Sherrod call home, he finds his young friend deathly still alongside a littering of empty vials that were supposed to avenge him with the Fiend.

  “No, no, no … what you do? What you do?” cries Bubbles, weeping upon the dead boy’s chest.

  At the appliance store, Slim Charles enters to tell Prop Joe the money from Marlo is on its way and the dope is too. Omar puts his crew into action.

  Namond, a coward and a bully, begins picking on Dukie at Cutty’s gym – calling him a “dogshit smellin’ nigga” – when Michael won’t talk to him. Michael turns on Namond, throwing him against a wall and beating him until he cries.

  When the gym clears, Carver shows up and Namond is honest with Cutty and the cop: he can’t go home. His mother expects him to be a fierce gangster like his father but it’s not in him.

  While Carver tries to figure out what to do with Namond, Cutty goes to Michael’s house where no one is home but his drug addict mother.

  As Cutty leaves, she says: “You find that boy, you let him know I need some help around here.”

  When Cutty does find Michael, he’s hanging with Marlo’s boys, including top Stanfield lieutenant Monk Metcalf (Kwame Patterson).

  When Cutty tries to talk to Michael – “This here ain’t you” – the boy ignores him. Michael tells Cutty to back off and when Cutty dismisses him, Monk shoots the coach in the thigh.

  When he aims the barrel at Cutty’s head, Michael gently pushes it away – not unlike Brando pushing away Rod Steiger’s revolver in the back of a car in On the Waterfront – and waits with the wounded man for the ambulance.

  Realizing that the boy is lost, that indeed Michael is not unlike the Cutty that it took 17 years in prison to soften, the coach tells him to “go with your people.” And he does, leaving Cutty bleeding in the street.

  Omar and Renaldo suit up for combat while Kimmy wears a torn housedress and fake fur coat, posing as a hooker to distract security guards at the industrial site where the narcotics are to be delivered.

  Initially interested in only taking what was headed to Marlo (on a promise from Prop Joe he would tip him off to that spot), Omar now has his heart set on the whole kit-and-caboodle of the “right off the boat” shipment of dope.

  When Renaldo’s crew – a couple of Hispanic men posing as painters – shows up in a van, they block the tractor and trailer delivering the narcotics to Cheese, and Omar springs the heist. Cheese reports the commando-style raid to Joe, declaring: “I say we go find this faggot … first thing [the Co-op] gonna wonder about is us.”

  A block away from Miss Anna’s house, a Tilghman school punk calls 911 to say that a cop has been shot on the other side of West Baltimore. As the plainclothes car in front of the house where Randy lives roars off, gasoline bottle bombs are tossed inside. In moments, the house is aflame.

  At the hospital, Carver finds Miss Anna with second-and third-degree burns and Randy crying in a counseling room.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Carver says, “… we’ll get you some help.”

  At first refusing to look at the cop, Randy screams after Carver as he leaves: “You gonna help, huh? You gonna look out for me?”

  Miss Anna, the best thing that ever happened to the kid, dies of her wounds. Randy is shipped back to a group home.

  episode fifty

  “FINAL GRADES”

  “If animal trapped call 410-844-6286”

  BALTIMORE, TRADITIONAL

  Directed by Ernest Dickerson

  Story by David Simon & Ed Burns; teleplay by David Simon

  Merry Christmas.

  Homicide supervisor Jay Landsman’s holiday spirit is quickly dampened by red names on the board – Freamon is emptying the vacant houses – and vomit on his shoes.

  After turning himself in for the inadvertent death of Sherrod, Bubbles begins puking from withdrawal in the interrogation room. When Landsman and Norris return from cleaning themselves up, they find Baltimore’s best snitch hanging from the ceiling by his belt.

  The attempt fails and instead of charging him in the death, Landsman elects to ship Bubbles off to rehab, “something with soft walls.”

  As forensic teams go house-to-house recovering bullet casings, hair and fibers as well as laser images of footprints, the jockeying at police headquarters over who is going to get out ahead of the curve is in full swing.

  Daniels returns from the multiple crime scenes and tells Commissioner Burrell that the Stanfield organization, on whom they had wiretaps until Lieutenant Marimow pulled them three months ago, is the likely cause of the bodies.

  Burrell tells Daniels he has the department at his disposal and Daniels leaves to begin a citywide search of other vacant houses, with patrol shifts across the city mobilized and the body count rising.

  Rawls tells Burrell that if Daniels is credited with solving this one, he will move closer to the commissioner’s job.

  Not only is Daniels nowhere near his “throne,” says Burrell – warning Rawls never to cross him again – but you don’t have a prayer either.

  As Marlo and Chris Partlow look on, the New Day Co-op lords confront Prop Joe and Slim Charles over the stolen delivery. It is on Joe, they say, to make it right.

  “Share in the good, share in the bad,” reasons Joe, rejecting the idea but feeling the need – to protect his livelihood and his life – to give Marlo the direct number of the supplier present when Omar took the delivery.

  After dividing up that delivery among his crew, Omar still has “26 raw,” which Butchie suggests selling back to Prop Joe. The straight-up “fuck you” of the idea tickles Omar.

  Greggs hits the streets to look for the suspended-without-pay Herc and find the nail he shot into the road.

  In the hospital with his leg wound – watching HBO’s Deadwood in his room – Cutty gets a hard time from a nurse who takes him for a gangster. Colvin visits, seeking advice about how best to handle Namond, whom Bunny has come to care for.

  On the way out, Colvin lets the nurse know that Cutty isn’t a criminal. He got shot trying to help a kid escape the corner.

  It is to Wee-Bey, an aging corner boy serving multiple life sentences for murder, that Colvin makes a pitch for Namond, asking Wee-Bey to sign the boy over to him as legal guardian.

  Wee-Bey: “You askin’ too much.”

  “Yeah,” says Colvin, “but I’m asking.”

  Back at the vacant houses – as the story makes national news – a crowd has gathered as Little Kevin’s body comes out and Bodie loses it, yelling about Marlo the murderer and throwing a true fit, punching in windows on a parked squad car.

  McNulty watches and tells the other cops “that’s his friend in the bag,” but they lock Bodie up anyway.

  Watching on television, Carcetti knows his administration will have to clean up the mess. More complicated, says Wilson, is the lingering school mess and how taking state money to fix city schools is sure to be a political liability one way or the other.

  He advises Tommy to “go back to Annapolis, eat his shit,” but Carcetti’s pride gets the better of him and, after another visit to the State House, he turns the bailout down.

  Back at the store after doing their best to pacify the other Co-op leaders, Prop Joe and Slim Charles go over their handling of Marlo. Cheese thinks the supply is now at risk with Marlo in direct contact with the overseas shipment. Joe says he had no choice, when …

  Knock-knock.

  Who’s there?

  Omar.

  Omar who?

  Omar here to sell back the dope I just stole from you at popular prices – 20 cents on the dollar. And don’t you know that ole Joe knows a worthy proposition when he sees one.

  In a gymnasium, the bodies mount to 17. Wandering in looking for Pearlman – he wants her signature to get charges against Bodie dropped – McNulty can’t quite keep the born detective inside of him quiet.

&n
bsp; He peppers Bunk and Freamon with questions and they tease him about what it must be like to be a “police” who can’t work such a tasty case.

  Bunk and Greggs have identified the model of the nail gun but found no trace of the nail Herc fired. They’ve called for a metal detector and will sweep the street. Other than that, some luck with the hair, fibers and blood would be welcome.

  The next move is to issue search warrants and hope Partlow and Snoop are still in possession of the nail gun, whose purchase – both comical and ominous – launched the entire season.

  When Pearlman points out that it’s no crime to own power tools, Bunk says they also have a witness linking Partlow and Snoop to the bodies, referencing Randy. Freamon, in fidelity to Prez, corrects Bunk by saying they only have a source, not a witness.

  Frustrated, Bunk says he needs an hour to clear something up. Greggs follows him out.

  Dukie shows up for his first day at Frederick Douglass High School, named for the African-American author and abolitionist (1818–1895), born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

  When he is pushed by a group of bigger kids, Dukie packs it in and leaves. Back at Tilghman, Prez’s class is taking the system’s all-important statewide performance test. Some try, some are frustrated and some don’t care.

  When the scores come back, Prez almost swoons at the results: improvement across the board with a goodly number of the kids shown to be “proficient.”

  His seltzer water goes flat, however, when Grace Sampson points out that the state defines proficient as two grades below their level and “advanced” at or a grade below their level.

  The most improved?

  “Mr. Prezbo.”

  A rather lousy cop, Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski has become a teacher.

  At Lex’s house, Bunk and Greggs are told by the dead man’s mother that his body was in such bad shape they wouldn’t let her see it. When Bunk points out that she could have cooperated a lot sooner, she says she heard that Snoop and Chris killed her son.