The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  episode fifty-eight

  CLARIFICATIONS

  “A lie ain’t a side of a story. It’s just a lie.”

  – TERRY HANNING

  Directed by Anthony Hemingway

  Story by David Simon & Dennis Lehane; teleplay by Dennis Lehane

  McNulty gives Mayor Carcetti a detailed report of his investigation thus far on the serial killer. Also present are Commissioner Rawls and his deputy, Cedric Daniels.

  Asking for a budget for more surveillance, Jimmy adds that he’d like Sergeant Carver to head the team. And some decent undercover cars would also help. The mayor tells him to use rental cars.

  Looking for a job, Dukie stops in at a shoe store where Poot – having had it with the corner after going to jail and seeing his homey Bodie murdered – is working.

  [“America,” said Dennis Lehane,, who wrote this episode, “would very much not like to see gang-bangers humanized – it’s too confusing.”]

  Poot recognizes Dukie from the neighborhood, tells him to hang in there a little longer and come back when he’s older. Dukie’s next job application is with a junk man collecting a derelict refrigerator on the street. He is hired on the spot.

  When McNulty catches up with Carver, he tells him that he and Freamon will use the newly approved surveillance to chase Marlo Stanfield. Though suspicious that Lester’s wiretap isn’t kosher, Carver joins in.

  Carcetti juggles conflicting priorities: how to avoid cuts in school funding, send extra money to the police department to catch the serial killer, and come out as undamaged as possible for a run at the governor’s mansion?

  Tommy will later float deals to potential opponents from suburban Washington to make sure the path is as clear as possible when the time comes.

  In the swift trading of horses surrounding all of this, City Council president Nerese Campbell promises to support Carcetti any way she can if he endorses her for mayor. And the freshly exonerated Clay Davis promises fidelity in exchange for two seats on the liquor board.

  Later, Freamon encounters Clay Davis charming a woman in a cocktail lounge. Lester tells Davis that it was he who amassed most of the evidence that Clay dodged at his corruption trial and wonders aloud if the senator could again be so fortunate.

  Lester then gives Davis copies of the paper trail he’s documented in regard to illegal loans and promises silence in exchange for future favors.

  (Lester will tell a colleague: “When you show who gets paid behind all the tragedy and the fraud … when you show how the money routes itself, how we’re all vested, all of us complicit, baby I could die happy.”)

  Carver’s surveillance team – Dozerman, Brian McClarney, Bobby Brown, and Truck Carrick have a case worth working – one with unlimited OT and shiny new rental cars.

  On the Guilford Avenue loading dock behind the newspaper, Gus Haynes speaks openly with other reporters about doubts regarding Templeton and the serial killer story. The editor is pretty sure Templeton is hyping it. No matter, it’s real enough that they’ll be writing column inches about homeless people through the end of the year.

  Back in the newsroom, Haynes is told there’s a homeless military vet in the lobby complaining that Templeton won’t take his calls.

  The vet – Terry Hanning – tells Gus that Templeton’s story about the guy who came back from Iraq is riddled with bullshit, that a Marine would never embellish the details of combat.

  The city editor’s patience with Templeton has long given out, the most recent example of Scott’s lack of integrity being his failure to own up to the errors in the seafood allergy story.

  When Templeton tries to dismiss Hanning as a crackpot, Haynes orders him to track down other men from the unit and find out what happened near Fallujah. If there were errors, they will write a correction.

  As Dozerman and Truck play with the bells and whistles on their undercover rental car, Omar approaches and lets them know where a couple of corner boys have stashed their dope.

  In wake of the bust, Omar approaches, scattering a group of younger boys with his mere presence.

  [Likewise proving who is boss to all the other kids on the tot lot, New Yorker Kate Porterfield outfits her toddler in a “onesie” that says: “Omar Don’t Scare.”]

  Apparently, neither does Kenard (played by Thuliso Dingwall), who watches as the Bigfoot of Bawlmer – seldom seen but almost always fatal – tosses the drugs left behind by the corner boys.

  [“I made sure we kept a scene of Kenard looking at Omar for a second or two,” said Kate Sanford, the film editor who cut this episode. “I wanted to make sure that moment existed for the record.”

  By the end of the hour, every viewer knows why.]

  Omar then counts off several vacant rowhouses from the corner, and, in front of the fourth, announces that he will be “obliged” to come in if they don’t behave accordingly.

  In a moment, a trash bag of narcotics lands on the sidewalk, which Omar kicks toward the sewer opening in the curb, disposing of it.

  He then shouts across the silent corner: “I’m out here in these streets everyday, me and my lonesome. Where he at? Huh? You put it in his ear – Marlo Stanfield is NOT a man for this town.”

  The stickup artist then goes to an Asian grocery to buy cigarettes through the revolving Plexiglas, paying no attention to the tinkling bell that announces the entry of the young hopper Kenard, who puts a bullet in the back of the big man’s head.

  When Bunk arrives to investigate, he finds a list of the Stanfield crew-members Omar was hunting among the dead man’s belongings.

  In the newsroom, Alma Gutierrez tells Gus of a Westside murder – no ID yet – and the editor tells her to write up a fire story instead.

  [Said David Michael Ettlin, who spent 40 years on the City Desk of the real Baltimore Sun and appeared in the scene: “I tell Gus how much room he had for cop stories and he goes with the Charles County house fire with two dead and bags the sketchy homicide, thus consigning Omar Little’s departure to news oblivion.”]

  What is not news at the newspaper, however, is big news in homicide as Bunk hands over Omar’s handwritten hit-list to McNulty.

  Bunk also tells Jimmy that the lab returned a positive match between Partlow and Michael Lee’s dead stepfather, beaten to death in the alley. McNulty asks that Moreland hold off on the murder warrant as Lester Freamon is close to bringing down Marlo’s house of cards. Bunk agrees.

  But Lester is not as close as he thought. When Marlo receives a phone call, the surveillance teams reports that no one else in the Stanfield group has used a phone. There is someone else in the loop. When McNulty gives Freamon Omar’s hit-list, Lester sees Cheese’s name on it and surmises that he must be the missing link in the Stanfield phone network.

  Working with McNulty to catch the serial killer with the help of the FBI, Greggs digs into a mammoth pile of files on known sex offenders to compare them with what is known about the Baltimore predator. Unable to watch her do such tedious work for naught, McNulty comes clean, outing Freamon along with himself. Kima is flabbergasted.

  Trying to find the location of a possible Marlo meet, Sydnor consults a Baltimore street map. Going over the coordinates, he has a Prez-like epiphany: Marlo’s “clock code” is based on map coordinates.

  Freamon deduces that each meeting likely takes place within an hour of receiving the clock code.

  Back on Calvert Street, Gus tells Templeton he’s cutting the lead to his homeless vigil story – at which Templeton makes an impassioned speech worthy of Clifford Odets – because he again used an unnamed source.

  Templeton bristles and rants – in his immature way – at the suggestion he is lying, and managing editor Klebanow steps in to challenge Haynes. On his way out the door, the city editor says he is following the paper’s policy on naming sources.

  At home, McNulty unloads his conscience on Beadie, who is one straw away from kicking him out for good, and tells her about making up the serial killer and how it has spiralled beyond
his control.

  Beadie realizes that Jimmy could go to jail and she could be mixed into the prosecution. As a snapshot of Jimmy McNulty, beyond the chronic infidelity, drunkenness, and hubris, this may be his most selfish stunt of all.

  episode fifty-nine

  LATE EDITIONS

  “Deserve got nuthin’ to do with it.” – SNOOP

  Directed by Joe Chappelle

  Story by David Simon & George Pelecanos; teleplay by George Pelecanos

  Sydnor and his team cover Marlo and his crew while Freamon tracks their coded cell phone images from the detail office. Noticing that a meeting is scheduled at a new and secluded spot, he surmises they are on to Stanfield’s supplier. The surveillance teams are told to rally at a warehouse near the marine terminal.

  A couple of blocks away, Freamon and Sydnor sit on the warehouse that Partlow has just entered. Lester tells the surveillance team that any Stanfield lieutenant leaving the warehouse is a target: pull them over, seize the dope and take their phones.

  Inside, Partlow is told by a Greek deliveryman that there is more than 100 kilos of raw heroin inside a shipment of refrigerators. When Monk and Cheese leave the warehouse with the shipment, the cops are on them.

  O-Dog meets with the shyster Levy, who arranges for the gangster to take the fall on weapons charges against Partlow and Snoop, a lesser version of Wee-Bey Brice taking the rap for multiple murders within the Barksdale group. With no prior convictions, O-Dog is sure to get a relatively lenient sentence and will be well paid for his time. Though willing, he is not crazy about the idea.

  At the paper, Gus Haynes welcomes back foreign correspondent Robert Ruby (played by Stephen Schnetzer and named for the former Sun reporter who covered the Middle East and authored the book Jericho: Dreams, Ruins, Phantoms.)

  Ruby is back in Baltimore after the paper closed the London bureau. Gus asks him to look into Scott Templeton’s reporting, as great an insult as exists in the newspaper world. Whiting surely won’t like it, says Ruby, heading for the paper’s library to pull clips of Templeton’s work.

  [“I didn’t envy ‘my’ character having to report on another reporter, but I was happy that he was the guy trusted enough to do the digging,” said the real Ruby. “Plus, the guy with my name seemed like an adult without also being a dullard.”]

  Carcetti’s chief of staff demands a ten percent drop in crime by the end of the quarter from Rawls and Daniels – more cops on the street, more arrests – to grease the mayor’s run for governor.

  Miffed that the mayor who promised an era of clean stats is no different from everybody else, Daniels finds Freamon waiting. Lester says he’s just a few warrants away from locking up the entire Stanfield organization.

  Happy to see some real police work bear fruit, particularly in the wake of political demands for faked improvements, Daniels calls Assistant State’s Attorney Pearlman.

  As police raid the warehouse and track Cheese, Partlow, and Marlo, Snoop and O-Dog rush to Michael’s apartment, where the boy watches the big bust on the news: $16 million in seized heroin, a connection to the vacant rowhouse murders and the mayor trumpeting his department’s fine work.

  Marlo sits in Central Booking with Partlow, Cheese, and Monk, scrutinizing the documents that led to their arrests. Thinking there had to be a snitch – the paperwork mentions “information received” – Michael’s name comes up. When Monk mentions that Omar has been calling out Marlo by name in the streets, the boss shows a range of emotion – pure anger – not previously seen.

  [“Terrifying in every way,” said the writer Malcolm Azania, who interviewed the actor Jamie Hector about his character. “Hector agreed when I asked if Marlo was a psychopath: devoid of the capacity for empathy, without restraint in exploitation and cruelty.”]

  Marlo demands to know what Omar said about him and orders his lieutenants to put out the word that he knew nothing of the challenge. As far as Michael goes, they can’t afford any risks, says Stanfield.

  The next day, far from the world in which his old friend Michael is now trapped, Namond Brice gives a passionate speech about fighting AIDS in Africa while Bunny Colvin and his wife look on like proud parents.

  Visiting Marlo in jail, Levy and the drug lord try to figure out how the busts occurred. Only Snoop knew about it, and Marlo trusts her beyond doubt.

  (All of this, deliciously, traced back to Herc’s hard-on for Marlo in regard to the missing surveillance camera.)

  Haynes meets Council President Nerese Campbell for lunch and though the conversation is about the upcoming mayor’s race, he is hoping she sheds light on how factual Templeton’s reporting has been.

  (This is in light of Alma telling Haynes that Daniels refused to give a legitimate quote after the big drug bust, noting that he had been stung by anonymous, erroneous quotes when he spoke to the press after the Burrell/ Carcetti flap hit the papers.)

  Nerese concedes that Daniels’s reputation for loyalty is solid and Haynes has confirmed his suspicions that the quote regarding the Burrell/ Daniels rift was bogus.

  Back in the newsroom, Haynes asks about the paperwork he ordered to fact-check the homeless Marine story and Templeton says it will take at least three weeks.

  In the basement of his sister’s house, Bubbles tells reporter Mike Fletcher the story of his colorful life as he comes up on a full year of continuous sobriety.

  On Bubs’s anniversary, Walon tells Fletcher that anything said at the NA meeting cannot leave the room, in keeping with the 12-step program’s tradition which holds that anonymity must be maintained in regard to press, radio and film.

  Although he is disappointed that his sister never shows up, Bubbles shares from the heart and speaks about the death of Sherrod. It’s okay to hold onto grief, he says, as long as you make room for other things in life as well.

  Threatening Clay Davis with a federal indictment, Freamon meets the senator Clay Davis at a bar, wanting to know who is in charge of laundering drug money in Baltimore.

  Davis talks about Maurice Levy and other drug-connected defense attorneys and how they have side work sending money to developers and politicians, taking a cut at both ends.

  As the final payment to be free of Lester, Davis tells him that Levy sells sealed grand-jury documents leaked to him by someone in the courthouse.

  At Michael’s corner, Snoop tells the soldier she needs his help on a hit ordered by the boss. He grows suspicious, however, when she tells him not to bring a gun.

  Doing his homework, Michael watches Snoop and other Stanfield crew lay plans to set him up. When she comes back to the corner later on to pick him up for the job, Michael asks her to pull over so he can piss in an alley. When she stops, he pulls a gun from under his shirt and puts it to her head, saying he had nothing to do with the raids and arrests.

  “You was never one of us,” she tells him of his aloof and questioning nature. “Never could be.”

  When he racks the chamber, she looks in the side view mirror and says: “How my hair look, Mike?”

  “Look good,” he says, shooting her in the head.

  [Kerry Ann Oberdalhoff, a lifelong Baltimorean and granddaughter of a Sunpapers delivery truck driver, was a devoted viewer of The Wire and not sad to see Snoop go. “I levitated in my chair when Snoop got it,” said Oberdalhoff. “If only because I’d never have to hear that grating shit-inher-mouth voice again. Man, I had a raging hate for her.”]

  Proving that a good editor never forgets how to ride a bike, Haynes interviews Sergeant Raymond Wiley, the Marine Templeton wrote about who lost his hands in the Iraq war.

  While a therapist helps Wiley with his motorized prosthetic hands, the soldier tells Haynes that his buddies weren’t exchanging fire the day he was wounded.

  And his friend, Terry Hanning – who complained about the story – had no need to invent anything to impress Scott Templeton. Hanning had seen plenty of action and could have recounted stories on end. The Sun, says Wiley, must have lied.

  At p
olice headquarters, Greggs is on the warpath in regard to McNulty’s manifold falsifications, confronting Carver about it and going to see Daniels, where she tells him about the made-up serial killer.

  Daniels brings the news to Pearlman. Together they drive to evidence control to compare the serial killer’s tapped number against Marlo’s seized cell phone. When Rhonda dials the “killer’s” number from a court document, Marlo’s phone rings.

  Having run from the SUV in which he murdered Snoop, Michael rushes into his apartment to gather up his little brother Bug and Dukie, who has been spending his time stealing junk metal with his a-rabber friends.

  He drives his little brother to their aunt’s house in Columbia and drops him off with a box full of cash, barely able to keep from breaking down.

  Back in Baltimore, he takes Dukie to the a-rabber stables, where the cart-and-pony men are shooting dope by the light of fires burning in 50-gallon drums.

  episode sixty

  –30–

  ‘… the life of kings.’ – H. L. MENCKEN

  Directed by Clark Johnson

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

  Mayor Carcetti learns that the Baltimore serial killer – the sick-o who liked to bite and murder homeless men – was a fairy tale.

  Tommy is speechless for a moment before connecting all of the dots in the wake of McNulty’s stunt: it has negated all of his political victories. If it goes public, he says, Rawls and Bond – and most likely Pearlman, too – will have to take the hit.

  Rawls trades his silence on the McNulty/Freamon caper in exchange for a better job when and if Carcetti makes it to Annapolis as governor.

  Freamon figures out that grand jury prosecutor Gary DiPasquale has lost three times his annual salary in Atlantic City in the past couple of years and tricks him into talking. In a matter of moments, DiPasqule becomes Lester’s new informant.