The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  “When I played the villain in a school production of Egad, What a Cad! the whole school knew who I was,” he said. “After high school I started appearing at the Arena Players.”

  Founded in someone’s living room in 1953 by black Baltimoreans who wanted to put on plays, Arena is believed to be the oldest, continuously running, African-American community theater group in the nation.

  At the Players’ 300-seat theater at 801 McCulloh Street in West Baltimore, Chew has appeared in shows like Five Guys Named Moe and the Martin Luther King Jr. tribute Gospel at Colonius.

  He has also taught young people drama and music there, showing them “how to open up … how to read music and understand tone.”

  He had small parts on the NBC series Homicide and appeared as a shoe salesman in 2000 on the HBO miniseries, The Corner.

  Chew again worked for HBO in 2004 when he played a janitor in Something the Lord Made, in which Alan Rickman and Mos Def star as heart surgeons working at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

  In The Wire’s debut season, Chew appeared in two episodes. One of the few gangsters to appear in all five seasons, he met his end in Episode Four – “Transitions” – of the final year.

  “Close your eyes, Joe,” says Marlo as Chris Partlow comes up behind the big man, betrayed by his nephew Cheese and seated at the dining room table of his grandfather’s home, “the first colored man to own his own house in Johnston Square.”

  “Relax,” says Marlo, with quiet respect for the man he is about to dispatch. “Breathe easy.”

  Prop Joe’s final proposition – that he would simply get out of Marlo’s way and disappear – is rejected and proven true in the moment that Marlo nods and Partlow pulls the trigger.

  “From Robert’s first scene, we knew we had a subtle, smart actor, and the role of Prop Joe acquired more and more authority as the writers felt comfortable writing bigger scenes for the character,” said David Simon.

  “He is clever and comic, but never in a way that detracts from the plot or goes bigger than the moment. Along with Jay Landsman’s dialogue, what comes out of Joe’s mouth is probably the most fun that the writers can have with dialogue.”

  Chew didn’t see much of The Wire when it originally aired.

  “I don’t have HBO, but even if I did, I’m [hesitant] to watch because I don’t want to become too critical of my work.

  “I get recognized in the supermarket now, but that’s not what I want. I want the acclamation you feel taking a bow onstage after a job well done.”

  episode fifty-five

  “REACT QUOTES”

  “Just ’cause they’re in the street don’t mean they lack for opinion.” – HAYNES

  Directed by Agnieszka Holland

  Story by David Simon & David Mills; teleplay by David Mills

  Meeting Marlo at his favorite bench in Patterson Park, Vondas tells him that he was fond of Joe and then moves onto business: dependability is the ballgame.

  He hands Marlo a cell phone and tells Marlo to use it to for legitimate phone calls to establish a pattern of normalcy for cops who are surely listening.

  For business, Vondas shows Marlo how the device has covert functions. Leaving the meeting with Partlow, Marlo invites his lieutenant to celebrate with him in Atlantic City, but Chris is too concerned with security, noting that Omar is surely coming.

  McNulty calls Alma for the latest scoop on his serial killer. He teases with a sexual angle to the murders but hangs up before answering her follow-up questions.

  As Dukie Weems walks Bug home from school, discussing upcoming state tests with the boy, they pass Michael’s corner. Kenard hits Dukie in the back with a drink and when Weems fights back, he’s beaten by Spider.

  Rubert Bond announces Clay Davis’s indictment on the courthouse steps. Complaining to Rhonda Pearlman that the Sun never got a heads-up on the news, Bill Zorzi is told that Pearlman’s office did call the paper. The reporter she tried to reach, Zorzi tells her, left the paper months ago.

  Michael takes Dukie to Dennis “Cutty” Wise’s, saying he will settle the score with Spider. Dukie turns the offer down and is instructed by Cutty to put on a pair of gloves.

  Watching Dukie get worked over by a younger boy, Cutty tells Weems that just learning to fight won’t keep bullies away, it’s about something else. He then explains that the rules of the street only apply to the street, that the world beyond the corner doesn’t work that way.

  When Dukie asks how he might get to that better place, Cutty doesn’t have an answer.

  Defense attorney Levy goes over the postponed weapons charges against Snoop and Chris Partlow with Marlo present and tells them it’s nothing to worry about. Stanfield then hands Levy a check from his offshore account of laundered drug money and tells him to get in touch when he figures out what to do with it.

  Templeton joins Alma Gutierrez when she goes to meet McNulty in a bar and tells Jimmy they need more “juice” to get the story better play. McNulty gives up a few more details and soon the juiciest of all: the killer has begun biting his victims. Templeton takes the info back to the desk in time to make the second edition.

  On his way to work the next morning, McNulty sees his story on the front page. In the newsroom, Haynes assigns Alma to the police investigation of the serial killer with a taste for biting while Scott begins interviewing the homeless.

  Searching for relatively sane homeless people proves difficult for Templeton, who mostly encounters crazy people and drug addicts.

  At the Viva House Catholic Worker House of Hospitality – a soup kitchen established the same year in Baltimore as the riots following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – the reporter finds that most of the guests represent the ever-growing class of working poor.

  Carcetti presses Daniels for his strategy in catching the serial killer, which of course will take more resources and thus money. Carcetti approves unlimited overtime for two detectives. Nothing more.

  Herc visits the Western and gives his old partner Carver Marlo’s phone number, which he lifted from Levy’s Rolodex. Naturally, Herc wants his camera in return.

  When Clay Davis goes batshit in Nerese Campbell’s office over his indictment – threatening to bring down other political associates with him – the City Council president gets right to the point.

  He can take his lumps like a man or never work in Baltimore again. When Campbell uses Burrell as an example of how to go gently into the night – with a payback on the back end – Davis agrees.

  At the rim shop, while Marlo eats Chinese take-out with his mentor Vinson, Snoop and O-Dog, Monk walks in with a bulletproof vest clearly visible beneath his shirt. And then Partlow arrives to say that Omar spent the night outside of Monk’s apartment and is sure to return.

  Michael takes Dukie for shooting lessons in the woods with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. His uncoordinated friend is so green, however, he doesn’t even know how to rack a load into the chamber.

  The lesson disintegrates and Michael advises Dukie against carrying a gun: you will continue to be tested and if a gun is your defense against insult, you best be prepared and capable of using it.

  Near desperate, Dukie bemoans the fact that he can neither shoot nor fight. Michael tries to buck him up by saying he has other worthwhile skills.

  Kima Greggs is assigned to McNulty for his make-believe serial killer investigation. McNulty is disappointed – he was expecting surveillance equipment – but Bunk is livid that a working detective is being pulled off of real cases to assist Jimmy’s bullshit.

  Carver gives Marlo’s cell number to Freamon at the detail office. When Lester calls the number with a food order, Marlo answers – bingo! – and hangs up.

  Clay Davis takes his case directly to the people via a talk show hosted by Larry Young, a cameo role by a former Maryland State Senator named Larry Young, also indicted on ethics charges.

  On deadline for the next day’s update on the serial killer, Alma has nothing new from the cops;
Mike Fletcher has compiled a profile of the victims and Templeton brings in a hearts-and-flowers tale (once known in the real Baltimore Sun newsroom as “pathos and shits”) about a family of four living under the Hanover Street Bridge – the same area where Freamon and McNulty went fishing for bodies to dress up as murder victims.

  Again Haynes presses Templeton for source info and again Templeton lies his ass off.

  Trying to find a way to translate their serial killer case into a wiretap to use against Marlo, Freamon and McNulty come to the logical conclusion that the killer has to begin making phone calls. Before they do so, however, they agree a fresh body would help prime the pump.

  Bubbles asks Walon to come with him to a clinic where he is going to be tested for HIV. He’s afraid to go alone and Walon agrees. After a nurse finally draws blood from Bubble’s addict-ravaged veins, good news arrives: he’s negative. Instead of being relieved, Bubs is incredulous.

  Walon tells him: “Shame ain’t worth as much as you think. Let it go.”

  And shame doesn’t seem to reside anywhere visible in Scott Templeton. Hell-bent for a ride on McNulty’s serial killer story, he goes to a payphone with his notebook, dials his cell phone and begins taking notes.

  Desperate for a way to hold onto the sober and considerate Jimmy McNulty who came home every night – a limited edition version now nowhere in sight – Beadie Russell talks to the detective’s ex-wife by phone. And then she stops by homicide to talk to Bunk.

  Although very angry with Jimmy about the serial killer charade, he winds up telling her nothing more profound than that he can’t advise her how to play it.

  Templeton is playing the homeless murder big, having concocted a call from the killer to the Sun and running with it. McNulty’s scheme now has a surrogate mother in a renegade reporter. Realizing this is what he needs for the wiretap, Jimmy goes to the paper to discuss the situation with the editors. By the time he leaves, even Gus Haynes is on board.

  With the wiretap up, the scheme is for McNulty to document no calls from the serial killer while Lester monitors calls to and from Marlo Stanfield. When calls reach Marlo’s phone, however, all that can be heard is a click and a hiss.

  When Omar and Donnie make their raid on Monk’s apartment, they are ambushed by Partlow, O-Dog, Michael and Snoop.

  Donnie is killed and Omar – out of rounds – crashes through a glass door and onto a balcony, where he leaps to the ground from a height sure to be fatal.

  episode fifty-six

  “THE DICKENSIAN ASPECT”

  “If you have a problem with this, I understand completely.” – FREAMON

  Directed by Seith Mann

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

  Taking in the height from which Omar jumped, Marlo cannot believe that his nemesis not only lived, but escaped. Yet Omar is nowhere to be found, including local hospitals. When the coast is clear, Omar hobbles out of a maintenance room at Monk’s building, using a broomstick as a crutch.

  Mayor Carcetti cuts a ribbon for his “New Westport Project” along a languishing stretch of the South Baltimore waterfront, following the advice of Democratic big wheels to get his name on something tangible.

  Shoulder-to-shoulder with the mayor is the developer Andrew Krawczyk, the businessman who thought he was about to meet his maker on the day Omar killed Stringer Bell. As Carcetti wraps up his speech, a gang of stevedores heckle Krawczyk for carving up what is left of the working port.

  As McNulty lounges at his desk in homicide, telling Bunk about the crazy shit Templeton is making up, Moreland goes back to old files on the murdered bodies found in the vacant houses. Real cases, he pointedly tells McNulty, who shrugs off the criticism and offers whatever help he can provide via extra funding sure to be on its way to catch the serial killer.

  The big bosses at the paper congratulate Templeton on his work and approve his idea to spend the night with the homeless. Media from around the country want to interview Templeton, who is told by Whiting that the “Dickensian aspect” of homelessness will be his beat for the rest of the year. Stardust is being sprinkled and Alma wishes she’d kept the homeless killer story for herself.

  Freamon tells Sydnor about the wiretap scheme – how it’s unauthorized and off the radar – saying that if he has problems with it, he understands, but now is the time to walk away. Sydnor wants in and Freamon tells him that all of Marlo’s phone conversations are routine except for five calls with half-minute stretches of little or no sound.

  When McNulty comes in, Lester tells him they are going to need some manpower to follow Partlow and Monk. Jimmy responds with the morning news: the city is going to throw money at the serial killer. What does one have to do with the other? asks Sydnor. It’s a long story, says Freamon.

  Bunk wonders what Randy Wagstaff – one of the four schoolboy chums from Season Four – might have to say a year after the kid’s name turned up in a murder file. Landsman trumps him with a folder of sealed indictments and confidential grand jury testimony found in Prop Joe’s house after Joe’s murder. The courthouse, obviously, has a significant leak.

  (Bunk soon finds out how useful Randy might be when he visits the kid in a group home. Wagstaff is well calloused by now and dismisses Bunk and every other cop in the world: none of them can be trusted.)

  About to give a press conference on the serial killer at police headquarters, Carcetti worries the ugly news will cancel whatever positive attention he got earlier in the day when announcing the new waterfront development.

  The resentment carries over to the podium, Carcetti scolding the press for ignoring the Westport ribbon-cutting and focusing on the negative. But then he makes a U-turn in an off-the-cuff speech, saying that the powerful must be judged for how they tend to the city’s most vulnerable.

  The performance gets good reviews, the issue of homelessness seen in the mayor’s inner circle as a horse strong enough, in light of the current governor’s cuts in medical and housing aid, to ride to the winner’s circle at the state house.

  Bunk and Kima Greggs show up at the lab working – with the speed of a glacier – the tests on the bodies found in the vacant houses. When Bunk leans on the supervisor, the man admits that a temporary employee, hired in the midst of cuts in personnel, fucked up. The lab is now unsure what evidence came from which crime scene.

  Back with the old files, tediously running names from Kima’s case work through the crime database, Bunk gets a hit on Michael Lee and his murdered stepfather, Devar Manigault.

  Meeting with the Co-op for the first time since Prop Joe’s death, Marlo pins the death on Omar. He proceeds to say that he is now in control of the supply connection at the port and the Co-op is null and void. Cheese is promoted and the cost of the package has just gone up.

  Templeton blows his own horn on television as a fearless reporter of the streets, and McNulty tells Lester they are going to need yet another body to force the city to release cash for the investigation.

  After the meeting where Marlo dissolved the Co-op, Omar jumps Fat Face Rick, takes the gangster’s gun and tells him to let Marlo know that he is waiting, out in the open, ready for a showdown. After agreeing, Rick asks Omar if he killed Pop Joe. Omar laughs and Rick says, “Didn’t think so.”

  Visiting Michael Lee’s junkie mother, Bunk accuses the woman of killing Manigault. She is uncooperative and Bunk threatens to lock her up. She then says it was her son, Michael, who probably killed Manigault along with Snoop and Partlow.

  In the detail office, Freamon and Sydnor conclude that Marlo is communicating to his crew through photos sent as text messages.

  Drunk before a statue of General George Armistead – commander of Fort McHenry when the British bombed Baltimore during the war of 1812 – McNulty screams his justifications for inventing a serial killer.

  His conversation with the statue is interrupted by a call from Requer in the Southern saying there is another fresh body. By the time McNulty can get to it, however, cops
and reporters are already there.

  On the Westside, Omar carjacks a Stanfield SUV as it makes a cash pick-up. He shoots one guy in the knee and torches the vehicle and the money, telling the one with buckshot in his leg to make sure Marlo knows not only that he destroyed the money but he’s not “man enough” to meet him in the street.

  [“Omar didn’t want to rob Marlo, didn’t want no big shoot out,” said Michael Kenneth Williams. “He wanted Marlo to come out in the street, put his guns down and have an old-fashioned fight.”]

  During his night with the homeless, Templeton finds a veteran of the war in Iraq who tells him he wound up homeless after he returned home from combat.

  McNulty has his own encounter with the homeless when he brings a damaged man he finds on the street to the detail office, takes his picture with a cell phone and lays out a new plan for Lester, who has been stymied by the one-step-ahead technology Marlo is using.

  The scheme: McNulty will drive his pet homeless man – whom he calls “Mr. Bobbles” for the guy’s spastic gait – to an out-of-the-way shelter and send a cell phone photo of him to Templeton with a note from the killer that there will be no more bodies, only photos of victims not yet killed.

  Probable cause, says Freamon, for legal authority to begin surreptitiously collecting cell phone photos. McNulty then drives Mr. Bobbles to Richmond, supplies him with ID from a dead homeless guy and drops him off at a shelter.

  WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS

  CAMEOS AND STUNT CASTING

  “Simon and Ed Burns send ’em over to read and I do the best I can with ’em …”

  - PAT MORAN

  ROBERT F. COLESBERRY AS DETECTIVE RAY COLE

  Played by The Wire’s late executive producer, Robert F. Colesberry, Detective Cole was a low-key piece of work, better suited, perhaps, to teaching high-school history.