The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  On a nearby tier, heads are knocking between Wee-Bey – who copped to several life terms’ worth of murders for the Barksdale crew – and a guard named Tilghman, kin to one of Wee-Bey’s victims. Avon assures Wee-Bey that he will not have a problem with the guard for long.

  Back at the homicide unit, McNulty and Bunk are washing down a sweet pile of steamed crabs with cold beer. Bunk congratulates McNulty on having dutifully checked time and tides to put the female floater inside the city line – and jurisdiction – at the time of her death.

  That makes her the problem of city police Col. William Rawls, who already hates McNulty’s guts for the Season One investigation.

  Bunk reminds McNulty of the need to find Omar for the Gant case while McNulty notices a soiled headline in the traditional newspaper-as-tablecloth beneath the steamed crabs: 13 women found dead in a shipping container at the port.

  McNulty puts 1 and 13 together and makes a trip to the warehouse where Beadie Russell is cataloging personal belongings found with the dead girls.

  Examining the damage to the container’s air pipe, McNulty quickly deduces that the suffocations were no accident. Soon, a medical examiner is telling Beadie: “You just bought yourself thirteen homicides.”

  Meanwhile, Sobotka’s boys get a taste of Valchek’s vengeance in the battle of the church windows: sheaves of parking tickets, soon to be followed by early-morning Driving While Intoxicated [DWI] checkpoints outside union watering holes.

  The battle is on, especially once Valchek learns the International Brotherhood of Stevedores [IBS] has enough cash to hire a high-end lobbyist to work the state legislature on the dredging issue.

  Calling in a favor from Deputy Commissioner Burrell, Valchek gets a detail to investigate Sobotka and the union.

  Sobotka, in turn, has his people steal Valchek’s expensive surveillance van from the parking lot of the Southeastern District. The stevedores roll the toy into a container and send it on an extended tour of seaports around the world.

  And then an irony: thanks to McNulty’s keen eye for police work and his desire to stick his nemesis Rawls with 14 unsolved murders, Bunk and his new partner in homicide, Lester Freamon, get stuck with the case.

  The episode ends with an engineer (from the ship that carried the container with the smuggled women) bleeding to death.

  Identified as the man who closed up the air pipe after having his way with one of them, the engineer’s throat is cut by Vondas, who tells a subordinate to make sure that the corpse is dumped without hands or a face.

  Vondas and The Greek calculate the loss of the women in money, but The Greek acknowledges that the loss can be made good.

  There will be more women, The Greek assures his lieutenant.

  episode sixteen

  HOT SHOTS

  “What they need is a union.” - RUSSELL

  Directed by Elodie Keene

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

  The episode opens on the streets of West Baltimore as Omar schools his new lover, Dante, in the art of the stickup.

  They are watching money, hidden in a laundry basket, come and go from a drug house. Like clockwork – once in the morning, once at night – out comes a basket of clothes.

  Watch and learn, says the old pro, when out of nowhere, a couple of girls hit the boys with the laundry basket first.

  Omar is impressed, chuckling: “That something you don’t see every day.”

  Bunk, still looking for Omar to testify in the Gant case, has bigger fish to fry: 13 stowaways, dead in a shipping container. He and Freamon head to Philly to interview the crew of the freighter that carried the can. Beadie Russell tags along.

  None of the sailors finds it convenient to speak English.

  Back in Baltimore, Nicky Sobotka’s girlfriend, Aimee – the mother of his young daughter – continues to nag him about living in a better place. Nick says there hasn’t been enough work on the docks to make a move.

  McNulty drops by the evidence unit to return a few things and encounters Daniels. They talk about the Barksdale case, how they did the best they could with what they had, and the shitty rewards for the effort.

  Daniels tells McNulty he’s leaving the force to make use of his law degree.

  While the laundry basket stickup girls – Kimmy and Tosha – count their loot, they are surprised by Omar. He is there not to ambush, but recruit.

  Informed that Bunk and Freamon let the Atlantic Light sail without doing much more than holding the gear of a crewmember who seemingly jumped ship, Sergeant Landsman is not happy: “Rawls is watchin’ on this one … let’s at least pretend we got a fucking clue.”

  Meanwhile, Barksdale boys Shamrock and Country follow prison guard Tilghman. When they discover where Tilghman buys heroin that he is selling inside the prison, Stringer Bell visits the supplier, a blind tavern owner named Butchie.

  Noting that he speaks for Avon, Stringer prevails on the reluctant Butchie to set up Tilghman with a bad package of narcotics.

  Stringer also reminds Donette of her obligation to visit her imprisoned baby’s daddy regularly. And then he seduces her, perhaps out of genuine desire, perhaps to keep her close as a source of information about D’Angelo; most likely both.

  [D’Angelo nearly became a state’s witness once before, and he can easily tie Stringer Bell to murders should he choose to roll again.]

  In prison, Avon visits D’Angelo and tells him to stop getting high, at least for a while.

  “I’m askin’ you, man, outta love …”

  Shirking his marine unit duties, McNulty takes it upon himself to pursue the identity of the Jane Doe he found in the harbor.

  He is determined to connect her to the 13 girls in the can. Breast implants in the dead women connect them to Budapest. Doc Frazier, the medical examiner, is also able to determine that all of the girls in the can had had intercourse within 14 hours of their deaths. The floater, however, turned up negative for semen.

  On the docks, the cousins Ziggy and Nick, frustrated by the lack of work for guys like them with low seniority, decide to boost a container of digital cameras and fence them to a lieutenant of The Greek’s.

  At a dinner for his wedding anniversary, Valchek asks son-in-law Prez how his detail to find dirt on Sobotka is going. It’s lame, answers Prez, nothing but deadwood on the case.

  Again, Prez says that if the brass had let the Barksdale case go forward, they would have traced big money to many places.

  Valchek is listening this time, then blackmails Deputy Commissioner Burrell, who is seeking to be named acting commissioner of the department. The ultimatum: assign a real team of detectives to look into the dockworkers’ union or I make a stink about how the Barksdale probe was handled. Burrell agrees.

  Back at prison, Tilghman delivers his package of hot shots and inmates begin to die of overdoses. But not D’Angelo Barksdale, forewarned by his doting uncle.

  episode seventeen

  HARD CASES

  “If I hear the music, I’m gonna dance.” - GREGGS

  Directed by Elodie Keene

  Story by David Simon & Joy Lusco Kecken; teleplay by Joy Lusco Kecken

  Frank Sobotka makes nephew Nick meet him early one morning along a stretch of the Patapsco River and reprimands him for stealing the digital cameras. He wants the cameras returned, arguing that work is so hard to come by these days in Baltimore that they can’t risk losing more through stupidity.

  Too late, says Nick, already fenced. When Nick says that being honest ain’t helping him make ends meet – “I’m on my ass, Uncle Frank” – he makes reference to the off-the-books cash Sobotka always has at hand, pissing off the older man.

  “You think it’s for me?” bellows Sobotka. Cooling down, he tells Nick not to flash the hot money around the docks.

  At the prison, there’s a media circus and administrative clusterfuck over the strychnine-laced dope that got inside and killed five inmates.

  D’Angelo Barksdale is u
ngrateful. Could have been me the other night, D’Angelo tells his uncle, except that just before the bad dope started going around, it was “Avon to the rescue.”

  We need to use what happened to our advantage, Avon tells him. But D’Angelo won’t budge from his newfound moral center: he wants to know if Avon had the poisoned dope brought in.

  “We got it all covered,” says Avon.

  “Leave me the fuck outta that,” says D.

  Soon, Barksdale house counsel Maurice Levy is trading horses with prison officials, telling them his client, Mr. Barksdale, is willing to provide information on the bad dope in exchange for having some years shaved off his incarceration as Bell sets up Tilghman for the fall.

  At police HQ, McNulty sweeps into the homicide unit like the prodigal son. He’s hot to identify his Jane Doe floater, while Bunk reminds him yet again that they need Omar to put Bird away for the Gant murder.

  In the bag, lies McNulty, who is soon on the street, desperately pulling loose threads to find the man.

  Though Valchek asked for him by name to run his union investigation, Daniels tells Burrell that he’s turned in his resignation papers and will sit for the bar in a month.

  Burrell says he’s willing to clean the slate and start fresh, promising Daniels a major’s position and an independent investigative unit if he accepts the new detail and placates Valchek.

  Daniels agrees, as long as he can pick his own people for the detail. Fine, says Burrell, subject to Rawls’s approval.

  On the docks, Ziggy can’t help flashing all kinds of money from the camera heist while being resented by his co-workers.

  Nick brings his cash home to his girlfriend, Aimee. Lying about having come into some back pay, he talks about moving out of his parents’ rowhouse basement.

  [Soon they will find out that the traditional South Baltimore rowhouses are now high-priced townhomes.]

  Stuck with all the unsolved Jane Doe murders, Bunk and Freamon, accompanied by Russell, learn as much as they can about the movement of containers through the port, bemoaning that Russell has no helpful informants.

  Rawls tells Daniels he can have everyone he’s asked for to work the Valchek detail – a pissing match between two Polacks that Rawls sees as a waste of time.

  Herc, no problem; Prez, fine. Carver and Greggs and Freamon, sure thing.

  Everyone except McNulty.

  “He quits or he drowns,” says Rawls. “That’s the only two things getting him off the fuckin’ boat, so help me God.”

  Across town, Stringer Bell is left to run a drug ring that can’t get good product and so begins diluting dope that’s already weak.

  The Greek’s people want to talk to Nick and Ziggy about stealing tons of legal and uncontrolled chemicals, which are used for thinner if you’re a housepainter, and cocaine processing if you’re a drug trafficker.

  McNulty decides to play nice guy with his wife, Elena, signing the separation papers her attorney drew up as a way of getting back into her good graces and, hopefully, the house and bedroom.

  And he uses Bubbles to locate the elusive Omar in time for Bird’s trial date.

  At HQ, Detective Greggs, killing time at her desk in the property forfeiture unit, is visited by Daniels, who asks if she wants in on the new detail.

  Both of them are having trouble at home with spouses who want them out of police work. Greggs: “I’ll tell your wife if you tell mine.”

  Bunk, Freamon, and Russell visit the Clement Street Bar, pressing Frank Sobotka and letting him know that the girls in the can were murdered. Sobotka, suddenly nauseous, excuses himself and retreats into the bathroom, where he leans over the sink and looks to his right.

  There, a print of a famous Aubrey Bodine photograph from the pages of the Baltimore Sun in its glory days stares back at him.

  Stevedores – black, white and plentiful – work a crowded Baltimore pier in the first half of the last century. Steeled again to fight for the greater good, Sobotka walks out.

  episode eighteen

  UNDERTOW

  “They used to make steel there, no?” - SPIROS VONDAS

  Directed by Steve Shill

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

  Ziggy, playing drug dealer in his organically incompetent way, gets burned on a package by a white corner boy named Frog. Before Zig makes it to the end of the block, he’s stopped by a hard-ass dealer named Cheese and his crew of thugs, who drag him out of his car.

  Cheese has fronted Ziggy the package of dope lost to Frog and he is unsympathetic to excuses, of which Ziggy has many. Cheese takes Ziggy’s car and what cash the stevedore has on him, threatening to kill him if the debt is not repaid by the end of the week.

  Downtown, Lieutenant Daniels tells newly minted sergeant Ellis Carver that he wants him on the detail investigating possible corruption on the waterfront.

  “Why me?” asks Carver, who was Burrell’s snitch in the detail from the year before.

  Daniels explains that having caught Carver once, he expects it will be a long time before he is disloyal again. Carver gives his word and Daniels tells him that his stripes carry no weight in the detail and he will report to Greggs.

  With his team assembled – Herc, Carver, Greggs, and Prez – Daniels orders a review of the International Brotherhood of Stevedores’ union finances and approves undercover drug buys in areas where dockworkers are likely to cop dope.

  When Freamon walks into the detail – another shithole of an office, but at least above ground – he looks at the photo of the target on the wall and says: “Frank Sobotka.”

  The detective has already met Sobotka through the stalled investigation into the dead stowaways.

  In a prison visitors’ room, Donette brings D’Angelo’s son to him. She tries to warm D’Angelo to Avon’s attempts to help and return him to the fold. He is unmoved.

  “When they got no more use for you, that family shit disappears,” he says. “It’s just about business.”

  Back at the Pit, where D’Angelo once did family business, the Barksdale dope is so weak that junkies are walking blocks out of their way for something better.

  Banged and bruised, Ziggy tells his cousin Nick that black dealers on the Eastside beat him and took his car, and Nick, knowing Ziggy, tells him it must be his own fault.

  Ziggy explains that he needs $2,700 by Friday or he’s dead, and Nick, who gave his cash to his girl for an apartment, cannot help him.

  On the docks, Bunk shows up to serve grand jury warrants to Horseface, Johnny 50 and other stevedores who worked the Atlantic Light.

  Livid, Sobotka tells Bunk to take his best shot and equates the Baltimore cop with past generations of notable union busters. Under oath before the grand jury, the dock boys don’t know nothing. And without info from the inside, Bunk tells Beadie, all they’ve got is nothing.

  On a street in the southeast part of town, where white boys work drug packages for the locals, Herc buys dope from Frog and his crew.

  Not far away, at Little Johnny’s diner, Nicky Sobotka tells Vondas about the grand jury subpoenas and that his Uncle Frank wants to stop doing business for a while.

  Also, he says, Frank wants a meeting with The Greek.

  Frustrated by her ineffectiveness, Beadie Russell pays a visit to Maui, a stevedore she once dated, using him to gain information that might help the murder investigation.

  Flattered (with nothing to show for it afterward) Maui points her in the right direction: the port computers.

  Later, in the shipping tower at the marine terminal, a compliant Sobotka gives Bunk and Russell a walk-through of how cargo is moved and how easily it can get lost with the best of intentions.

  “They’re playing us,” says Bunk when the lesson is over, and together with Russell, they argue to Daniels and Landsman that the only hope for the murder probe is to clone the port administration’s computers and begin collecting data.

  Eventually, they will monitor the on- and off-loading of ships in
real time.

  Desperate to help Ziggy, Nick and a black longshoreman named La-La pay a visit to Cheese, trying to buy Ziggy some time and get back his car, which they say will be sold to pay off the debt.

  Nice offer, says Cheese, directing Nick’s attention around the corner, where the vehicle is already aflame, the camera holding for a moment on the rear license plate holder as it melts: “Happiness is Being Ziggy.”

  At the prison, Stringer tells Avon Barksdale that each package they’re getting from Atlanta – the substitute connection now that the Dominicans have cut them off – is weaker than the last. Yet other dealers in town have excellent product.

  Trying to placate Sobotka, The Greek sends word that he will double the fee for the smuggling of containers but refuses to meet with him. Sobotka says he’s out.

  By episode’s end, The Greek has tripled the fee for hot containers and Sobotka agrees, rationalizing that he’s got no choice if the waterfront is to be saved.

  ZIGGY SOBOTKA: ANGRY PRINCE OF GOOFS

  “There’s an innate frustration in Baltimore with just trying to get by. People will try anything.”

  - JAMES “P. J.” RANSONE, LOCAL BOY

  Growing up in one of Baltimore’s tonier villages north of the city – an area of colonial-era quarries and horse farms called Phoenix – P.J. Ransone was never quite sure where he fit in.

  He was too creative not to be bored hanging out and drinking with the kids “doing donuts” on the school parking lot.

  And a little too rough and crude for the “show-tune lunatics” who took classes with him at the Carver School for the Arts in suburban Towson.

  “I was the white-trash kid at art school,” said Ransone, who turned 30 on June 2, 2009. “Just because you grew up with a little more money than some people doesn’t mean you were any more highbrow than what people think of as white trash.”