The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  In the clerk’s office, McNulty sees that Partlow has checked out the file on Sergei Malatov, the Russian member of The Greek’s organization locked up during the dockworker case.

  Bond and Daniels catch Carcetti leaving the building and the mayor gives them two minutes to plead their case. They say the same unit investigating the bodies in the vacants is the one collecting info on Clay Davis.

  Two men to chase Davis, says the mayor, everything else stays down. As Carcetti leaves, Daniels says: “So one thieving politician trumps 22 dead bodies. Good to know.”

  At the newspaper’s afternoon “budget meeting” – where it is decided which stories will get better play than others, which ones need more work, which ones won’t run at all – mid-level editors are admonished by managing editor Tom Kelbanow for missing stories even though the staff has been reduced. Executive editor James C. Whiting III then kills a story about the University of Maryland failing to meet diversity goals and is suspected of doing so because of his personal ties to the school’s dean of journalism.

  All of which gives heartburn to Haynes, who sees an item buried in the City Council agenda about a vote to change zoning on a couple of parcels in what amounts to a land swap between a known crime figure – Ricardo “Fat Face Rick” Hendrix, a strip club owner present at the New Day Co-op meeting at the Holiday Inn – and the city.

  Haynes orders up reporting on all angles and eager beaver Scott Templeton can’t hide his resentment when asked to play back-up to Alma Gutierrez, who takes the lead on the story.

  Haynes fills in Klebanow on the fishy City Council land deal in which Fat Face Rick sells a building to the city for $1.2 million, and for a mere $200,000 they sell him a more choice address a few blocks away.

  Greasing the deal is at least $40,000 in campaign contributions from Rick to City Council president Nerese Campbell, whom Haynes will trick into intimating that the contributions were considerably more. The story goes A1, cause for celebration by everyone but Templeton, who pouts that he didn’t have a bigger role in it.

  Daniels tells Freamon that the plug has been pulled on the investigation into Marlo Stanfield and the 22 bodies in vacant houses. Greggs and McNulty – who is back to his drunken alley cat ways in regard to the long-suffering Beadie Russell – are going back to homicide. Lester and Sydnor stay behind to chase Clay Davis.

  Back in homicide, McNulty finds a greenhorn at his old desk and glares until the young man moves to another. As Jimmy falls into the chair, despondent, Landsman announces the return of “the prodigal son.”

  episode fifty-two

  “UNCONFIRMED REPORTS”

  “This ain’t Aruba, bitch.” – BUNK

  Directed by Ernest Dickerson

  Story by David Simon & William F. Zorzi; teleplay by William F. Zorzi

  Walon – played by the American singer Steve Earle [“When I walk down the street in Baltimore, it’s ‘Hey Walon!’”] leads a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in a church basement. When Walon urges Bubbles to speak, the newly sober junkie can’t find anything worthwhile to say.

  After the meeting, Walon tells Bubbles that if he doesn’t come to terms with Sherrod’s death, he may not stay clean for long.

  Pulling the threads of Clay Davis’s modus operandi, Sydnor and Freamon find that the senator is stealing from his own non-profit organizations. Lester says the bigger picture is cash that never appears anywhere: drug money for sure.

  Back at Stanfield HQ, where the crew can feel that surveillance has backed off, Marlo gives orders: force Webster Franklin to buy his dope from them; kill June Bug for running his mouth, and find Omar.

  When Partlow warns that Omar will come right back at them, Marlo – more interested in his prison meeting with Sergei – coolly brushes it off.

  [“A terrifying figure,” said Malcolm “Minister Faust” Azania, a Canadian novelist who has interviewed Jamie Hector and many other Wire writers and actors. “From his scar to his widely-set eyes to his vocal and facial ‘flat affect’, Marlo is a shark on two legs – an indifferent predator, a super-consuming carnivore without the capacity to create anything but terror and pools of blood.”]

  Carcetti and his advisors settle upon a bump in reading scores for third-graders as a good prop for his gubernatorial run. He sure as hell can’t run on his crime record. It is also noted that the real estate scandal which has snagged Nerese Campbell could trip him up as well.

  Back on Calvert Street, the executive editor wants an education story that shows how the school system has betrayed the kids of Baltimore.

  Reporter Scott Shane (played by New York Times reporter Scott Shane, a former Moscow bureau chief for the Sun and one of the most respected journalists in the paper’s modern era) notes that the schools are just one of the many parties concerned – including parents – who have failed local children. Gus Haynes agrees.

  Whiting presses on, brown-noser Templeton sides with him and gets the assignment. Scott is then tapped by managing editor Klebanow with writing the feature story on baseball’s Opening Day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards the next day.

  Haynes – the kind of scrupulous editor who wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking that he has transposed statistics in a story – tells Klebanow of the Templeton assignment: “You’re the boss.”

  At his prison meeting to establish a new supply of product, Marlo – whose face rarely betrays any emotion – cracks a small smile when instead of Sergei sitting down to talk to him through the two-way glass, it’s Avon Barksdale.

  Avon says he can make the new connect happen – bypassing Prop Joe and the nettlesome Co-op – but it will cost a fee of $100,000 delivered to his sister. When Marlo agrees, he gets to talk to Sergei, whose connection is directly to Vondas and The Greek above him.

  On the street, when Freamon tells McNulty that Stanfield’s underlings are getting sloppy in their communications, the pair try to figure out what it would take – and where they might find the resources – to bring down the organization.

  The partners take their problem to McNulty’s old buddy from the FBI, Agent Terry Fitzhugh.

  [“McNulty and Fitzhugh became friends before 9/11 when the Feds still did a lot of drug cases in the city,” said Doug Olear, who played the FBI agent. “After 9/11 it was all terrorism.”]

  Freamon and McNulty tell Fitz about the investigation into the vacant house case being shelved and tell him there’s some good media play in cracking the case if he can help.

  When Fitzhugh gets back to Jimmy, the news isn’t good: forget about help from the Feds, the US Attorney is in a pissing match with Tommy Carcetti.

  Returning to the newsroom from the ballgame, Templeton assures Gus he has “good stuff” and hypes a story about a 13-year-old kid crippled by a stray bullet who couldn’t afford a ticket to the game.

  As will become a pattern with Templeton stories, the kid is not identified and no photo was taken of him. For every question Haynes asks about the crippled kid, Templeton has a pat answer.

  [Said Clark Johnson about the end of The Wire’s five-season run: “I would have loved to have gone one more season just to tell stories like the one about the kid in the wheelchair at the baseball game.”]

  As Haynes presses for verifiable facts about the paralyzed Oriole fan in order to run the story in good conscience, Whiting gives Templeton kudos for a job well done, effectively shutting down Haynes’s reservations.

  At a watering hole, Bunk, McNulty, and Lester drink and mourn their aborted investigation and a country in which the “misdemeanor homicides” of nearly two dozen young black men is less important than one missing white girl in Aruba – referencing the media frenzy over the 2005 disappearance of Alabama high school graduate Natalee Ann Holloway, whose body has never been found.

  As part of the June Bug execution team with Partlow and Snoop, Michael Lee is stationed at the back of the house and told to handle anyone who runs out. At his post, Michael hears gunfire and screams, taking aim with his 9m
m when the rear door opens up. Escaping, however, is a young boy, not much older than Bug. Michael watches as the kid runs away.

  Arriving at a possible homicide scene with a hatchet-in-the-head hangover – a pint in his pocket to take the edge off – McNulty finds the corpse of a homeless man most likely dispatched by drugs and alcohol.

  And with his partner looking on, McNulty arrives at the most fateful crossroads of his life, playing God with the details in a way that nauseates Bunk. McNulty manipulates the evidence to make it look like the dead man has been strangled, inflicting wounds on the corpse’s fingers to indicate a struggle.

  As Bunk walks away in disgust, McNulty says: “There’s a serial killer in Baltimore, Bunk. He preys on the weakest among us.

  “He needs to be caught.”

  episode fifty-three

  “NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION”

  “They’re dead where it doesn’t count.”

  – FlETCHER

  Directed by Joy Kecken & Scott Kecken

  Story by David Simon & Chris Collins; teleplay by Chris Collins

  Fueled by Jameson’s and genius, McNulty has spent all night in the homicide unit combing through unsolved cases to complement his invented murder of the homeless man: fuel for his campaign to get the funds necessary to keep the Stanfield investigation alive.

  Arriving for work, Bunk says that Jimmy is going to land them both in jail and that Marlo isn’t worth it. But McNulty is convinced he has found his ace and he’s going to play it for all it’s worth.

  [“The social and economic conditions of Baltimore worked well for the show – what The Wire said about Baltimore became ‘true’ for me,” said Christopher Kubasik, a screenwriter in Los Angeles. “Budget issues bear down on all cities, but Baltimore’s crisis – brought about by having no new economic growth to replace the dying economies – meant pressure could be brought to bear on all institutions and characters at the drop of a hat. And used as an excuse by the characters to justify their actions.”]

  McNulty is never able to justify his actions to Bunk, but he is able to persuade Moreland not to turn him in – as long as Bunk’s name is kept out of the case file.

  In his search for similar cases, Jimmy discovers a victim with a red ribbon tied around his wrist and an unsolved murder of a homeless man investigated by the late Detective Ray Cole.

  [At Cole’s barroom wake, the Pogues song “Body of an American” was played. A few years later, when the final episode of The Wire aired on March 9, 2008, David Simon passed up watching it – having seen it numerous times in post-production – to hear the Pogues live at the 9:30 Club in his native Washington, D.C.]

  McNulty heads out to buy a spool of red ribbon, which he will soon attach to the wrists of homeless corpses at the morgue: let the games begin!

  (It will take a few tries, but in time Jimmy’s thinking-out-loud commentary about victims with red ribbons will jog the memory of Detective Frank Barlow, whose old, unsolved case involved a victim sporting a red ribbon.)

  Noting a four percent increase in crime for two quarters running, the ever-prudent Stan Valcheck – now the police department’s deputy commissioner for administration – tells Carcetti to fire Burrell and Rawls and make him commissioner until he retires, while grooming Cedric Daniels for the top cop job.

  When Burrell comes in with statistics showing neither a drop nor spike in crime, Carcetti leans on him to provide authentic numbers. Burrell stands by his paperwork. When he leaves, Carcetti decides to leak info to the press that he is considering Daniels to replace Burrell.

  Carcetti aide Norm Wilson meets Gus Haynes for drinks and tells him about Burrell being on thin ice with the mayor. The city editor assigns the story to Templeton, who, knowing nothing about Cedric Daniels, hands it off to old pro Roger Twigg, played by Bruce Fitzpatrick.

  (The story will run on the front page, with another unattributed quote from Templeton, and drive a wedge between Burrell and Rawls.)

  At the paper, which has amassed both fortune and renown since its founding in 1837, editors Whiting and Klebanow announce that corporate owners in Chicago have ordered the closing of bureaus in Beijing, Moscow, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, and London.

  There will also be a new round of buy-outs to trim the staff, attrition that will claim Twigg, whose institutional memory – as evidenced by his knowledge of Daniels without having to consult clippings – is vast.

  After his meeting with Sergei in prison – arranged on the good word of Avon Barksdale – Marlo and Snoop bring a briefcase of money to Little Johnny’s Diner on South Clinton Street, the headquarters of The Greek’s operation.

  Handing the briefcase to the guy behind the counter, Marlo asks that it be passed along to Vondopoulos. The ability to simply hand over satchels of currency presents a problem of riches for Stanfield and he pays a visit to Prop Joe for advice on how to launder money.

  With the help of an Eastside preacher, Joe explains that dirty comes clean through acts of goodwill: financing schools and hospitals in the Carribbean that never get built.

  At home, Dukie can see that Michael is not himself, what with problems on the job involving split-second decisions about whether or not to shoot a little kid. Dukie suggests a day at the amusement park would do them all a world of good. Michael agrees and they have a jolly good time.

  When Vondas tells Marlo he doesn’t want money that is filthy from being out on the street – that if he is going to launder cash for him, the actual bills have to be cleaned up first – Marlo goes to Prop Joe with the problem.

  Ever astute, Joe says he will freshen up the lucre gratis because they are part of the Co-op. Marlo then asks that the word be put on the street that he has a $50,000 reward for info leading to Omar.

  Behind Joe’s back, his nephew Cheese will tell Chris Partlow that Blind Butchie the barkeep may well know of Omar’s whereabouts, pocketing the $50,000 reward.

  When Landsman tells McNulty and Barlow he doesn’t much care about a serial killer of vagrants, Jimmy drops a dime to Alma at the Sun.

  [Asked why Jimmy the dog didn’t try his charms on the young reporter when they meet at a diner, David Simon explained: “She had ethics. McNulty had no shot.”]

  The story will be buried on the inside of the metro section, warranting a little more interest than Landsman showed, but not much. The fat man does, however, give McNulty a few more days to work his “Ripper” hunch and then it’s back to rotation, catching bodies as they surface.

  In the Grand Jury room, Rhonda Pearlman presses Clay Davis’s driver – “Day-Day” – about how he managed to simultaneously collect three salaries from three jobs, all the while driving the senator from meeting to meeting.

  At Butchie’s tavern, Snoop and Chris Partlow tie him up and torture him for info on Omar. When the blind man won’t give anything up, they kill him and leave word for an employee of the saloon to make sure Omar gets word of what just went down.

  Unbeknownst to one another, Omar and Marlo are both in the Carribbean: Omar in idyllic anonymity in Puerto Rico and Marlo on St. Martin, getting a look at his off-shore accounts.

  Omar’s respite, however, ends with the news that Butchie has been murdered.

  When Clay Davis offers his help to Carcetti in exchange for the black ministers’ support of replacing Burrell with Daniels, the mayor’s chief of staff responds that the story about replacing the police commissioner has been out for a full day and no one has complained. Davis is sent away.

  Watching as McNulty explains his serial killer scheme to Freamon, Bunk is relieved to hear Lester tell Jimmy that he “fucked up.”

  But Freamon takes the admonishment the other way, telling McNulty he didn’t go far enough: it needs more juice, some sick fantasy angle.

  And more dead people.

  DIRECTING EPISODE NO. 53: “NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION”

  A week before our first day of production, in the spring of 2007, a tech scout van was parked in front of the Wire offices on South Clinton Street along
the Baltimore waterfront, waiting to take us on a tour for locations we would use in our episode.

  The van held a skeleton crew of essential department heads who were prepping the upcoming shoot: Shelley Ziegler, first assistant director; Russell Lee Fine, director of photography; Vince Peranio, production designer; Charley Armstrong, location manager; and us, Scott and Joy Kecken, husband and wife directing team.

  We were tasked with deciding not only which neighborhood we would have a small filmmaking army descend upon, but if that street or bar or apartment served the teleplay by Chris Collins.

  Directing entailed many key creative decisions, but choosing a location was a top priority. This choice impacted every department.

  Would the costumes clash against the color scheme in the house? Could all the camera equipment get up the stairs? It factored into our directing process – from where we would put the camera to whether we could shoot the scene on the Westside to make a 12-hour workday.

  Over 30 locations had to be selected by us and then approved by the producers. For Omar’s Caribbean island getaway, beaches in Ocean City, Maryland, and along the Florida coastline were in contention before deciding a separate unit would later pick up that scene in Puerto Rico. Scheduling was extremely important as we had a location-intensive shoot of 74 scenes.

  Several sets that would be featured prominently throughout Season Five had already been built at the soundstage in Columbia, Maryland. We had been given blueprints of those interior sets, mainly for Police Headquarters, City Hall and the Baltimore Sun.

  The challenge for this episode would be the penultimate scene where Executive Editor James Whiting delivers his monologue to a packed newsroom about the state of the newspaper industry. This set was so large it required over a hundred extras to fill it. We would get to that. Today was about scouting for Sun reporter Alma Guiterrez’s apartment; the bar where City Editor Gus Haynes and Detective Lester Freamon would meet; and the Baltimore Sun’s Port Covington printing plant, in view of the docks so prominent in Season Two.