The Wire

Gotta be somewhere. You wanna keep goin'?

Officer Smith, ma'am.

We're looking for a man went after a woman last night

at esplanda apartments, the ones right behind you.

Heard anything unusual? - No, sorry.

Oh my God, that's terrible.

Is the woman alright? - Huh?

- The woman, is she alright?

Yeah. Yeah, she good.

- Excuse me, my brother, Omar little,

came here last night. He fell out the damn window.

- We don't have anyone by that name.

- He was kinda, ya know, high.

Probably messed up his name.

Real dark, got himself a scar.

Legs should be busted up real bad.

- No one with that type of injury came in last night.

- Not a goddamn thing. Been in every trashcan, dumpster,

vacant for three blocks 'round. Nothin'.

We even checked down the sewers.

Marlo wanna meet.

- So what you want us to do?

Which one?

Don't seem possible.

It don't.

- That some Spiderman shit there.

We missed our shot.

Now he gonna be at us.

- Usually, my staff tries to keep sharp objects

out of my hands.

You know, it all started with Charles center and

Tommy d'alesandro and it continued with William Donald

schaefer and harborplace. And following that,

there were mayors schmoke and o'malley with inner harbor east.

Well, today it is my administration's turn to

lay claim to the middle branch of the patapsco and

what will soon become known as new westport,

revitalizing another waterfront area of

our great city. Thank you.

- Say g'bye to locust point south.

Fuck you, Krawczyk.

Yeah, fuck you, greedhead motherfucker.

Fuck you for tearing down the port of Baltimore and

selling it to some yuppie assholes from washington.

- C'mon buddy. - This is bullshit.

Who the hell's that?

- Oh that's nobody, Mr. Mayor. It's nobody at all.

- Ya happy now, bitch? - I am content, yes.

- You called the reporter, huh? - no, actually.

That asshole's making up his own shit.

Brass called a press conference for this afternoon.

They're gonna be shoveling so much money at

my bullshit it'll make your head spin.

- What's with all the casework? - Bodies from the vacants.

- And some of them have been worked pretty good.

You know what, Jimmy?

I'm gonna go back to the beginning and work

every one of them again. Back to square one.

You know why? Because I'm a murder police.

I work murders. I don't fuck with

no make-believe, I don't jerk shit around.

I catch a murder and I work it.

Working this shit like I'm supposed to.

- Well, lemme know if you need anything, alright?

Cars, some o.t., some lab work...

Anything you need.

Because in... Three or four hours the money's

gonna flow on my case. Whatever you need, Bunk,

I'm probably gonna have more of

it than even Lester could use.

- To be that close to a serial killer.

It must be weird.

Kinda. Yeah.

Wonderful story, Scott.

- Yeah, well, it kinda wrote itself.

I mean, it's a lucky thing to have the guy call m

like he did... - Well it comes

from you pounding the pavement, right?

That's more than luck. That's putting yourself in

the place where the story comes to you.

What do you have for tomorrow? - For tomorrow?

- This is not the kind of thing we let go of after a day or two.

- I, um, you know, I was thinking that if I spent

a night with the homeless, you know.

Did what they did. Saw what they saw. That kind of thing.

I mean, if it's an overnight thing,

I couldn't get it for tomorrow, but the next day, sure...

That's great.

That could be the perfect follow. I'll speak to Gus.

- Also, Scott, we've been taking calls

from some of the national networks and cable outlets.

They're looking for you to go on-camera.

- Me? On television? - I'd avoid the locals,

but if you can do the nationalstuff in a

- sure, yeah. I mean I'm just not all that comfortable

having myself in the center of the story like this.

- Of course not. But there is a way of handling

this responsibly, I think.

Just remember you're an ambassador for the paper.

Star time.

Yeah.

How 'bout that?

- Homelessness. - Our coverage should reflect

the diensian aspect of the homeless.

The human element.

Scott will lead it off, spending a night on the streets

and writing from that perspective.

- Scott? He's the lead on your education project.

I think we need to get him back on the...

- I don't see the... The school project as yielding

the same kind of impact as our attention

to homelessness can.

These murders, the phone call to our reporter.

It really opens up the issue, don't you think?

- Yeah, but... - From now til the end of the year,

let's focus not only on covering the murders,

but on the... The nature of homelessness itself.

- The dickensian aspect of it. Yeah.

- I've reached a point, detective Sydnor,

where I no longer have the time or patience left

to address myself to the needs of the system

within which we work.

I'm tired. - You're gonna quit?

Not yet. Not just yet.

- So what are you talking about?

- When they took us off Marlo this last time,

when they said they couldn't

pay for further investigation...

I regarded that decision as illegitimate.

- Illegitimate? - And so...

I'm responding in kind. I'm going to press a case

against Marlo Stanfield without regard to the usual rules.

I'm running an illegal wiretap on Marlo Stanfield's cellphone.

Fuck, Lester.

- If you have a problem with this,

I understand completely

and urge you to get as far fucking

away from me as you can.

- You remember this one here?

Backed away from jackin' the boy up

outta respect for that goofy motherfucker pryzbylewski.

Wonder what the young man might tell me a year later, though...

Bunk.

- What the fuck is this? - Vernon here did a search

warrant on his dead guy's appliance store,

pulled all of that out of the desk drawer.

- Grand jury shit? - Transcris,

sealed indictments... - Who's your murder?

- Eastside dealer by the name of Joe Stewart.

Caught one in the back of his head the other night.

- Somebody finally touched prop Joe, huh?

Hmm-hmm.||

- you remember when narcotics indicted Charlie burman last year?

Motherfucker ran a couple days before the raids,

still on the wing.

- The sealed indictments are all in there.

Every one of 'em.

- Who don't we trust at the courthouse?

They put cheese on them fries?

They can. Chili too.

- Alright then. - You want a drink with that?

- Strawberry lemonade. - Alright, I'm on it.

- They're back on cellphones. After more than a year?

That they are.

- Tell me they're talking in code, Lester.

I wanna go to jail for snatchin' something better

than Marlo Stanfield's fucking lunch order.

- There's no code that I can tell.

I've got a half dozen calls,

all routine. No drug talk, no numbers, no times...

Nothing but what they seem.

- So he ain't doing business with the phone then.

So take this mess down. Let's get the fuck outta here.

I also have five calls,

thirty to forty seconds duration,

each one picked up on the first ring,

each one with nothing whatsoever

said between parties. You see? When they talk,

it's bullshit.

But there are calls where no one says a thing.

Thirty seconds, without conversation.

Is he...

We talked it through,

he knows the risks.

- I'm in. If it makes the fucking case,

I'm in all the way.

So, what's up now?

They talking dirt?

no.

Lester. Fuck.

Marlo's not gonna talk dirt on the phone,

but there's something to this.

I just haven't figured it out.

We could use some more manpower.

We need a couple of surveillance teams

to get on these guys to see how they using the phones.

- You see the newspaper today?

Headline like that, the bosses are gonna start

throwing money at the homeless murders.

When they do, I'll peel off a couple detectives,