"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." " Heard anything unusual?" " No, sorry." "Oh my God, that's terrible." "Is the woman all right?" " The woman, is she all right?" " 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 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 trash can, 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 goodbye 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?" " That's nobody, Mr. Mayor." "It's nobody at all." " You happy now, bitch?" " I am content, yes." " You called the reporter?" " No, actually." "That asshole's making up his own shit." "Brass called a press conference for this afternoon." "They'll be shoveling so much money at my bullshit it'll make your head spin." " What's with all the casework?" " Bodies from the vacants." " Some still missing lab work." " Pathetic..." "And some of them have been worked pretty good." "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, let me know if you need anything, all right?" "Cars, some OT, some lab work..." "Anything you need." "Because in three or four hours the money's gonna flow on my case." "Whatever you need, 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." "It's lucky to have the guy call me like he did..." "It comes from 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?" "This is not the kind of thing we let go of after a day or two." "I was thinking that if I spent a night with the homeless, you know." "Did what they did." "Saw what they saw." "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." "We've been taking calls from some of the networks and cable outlets." " They're looking for you to go on-camera." " Me?" "On television?" "I'd avoid locals, but if you can do the national stuff responsibly..." "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." "Just remember you're an ambassador for the paper." "Star time." "How about that?" " Homelessness?" " Our coverage should reflect the Dickensian aspect of the homeless." "The human element." "Scott will lead it off, spending a night on the streets and writing from that perspective." "He's the lead on your education project." "We need to get him back on the..." "I don't see 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." " Yeah, but..." " From now till the end of the year, let's focus not only on covering the murders, but on 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 I urge you to get as far fucking away from me as you can." "You remember this one here?" "I backed away from jacking' the boy up outta respect for that goofy motherfucker Prez." "Wonder what the young man might tell me a year later, though..." " 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?" " Transcripts, 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." "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." " All right, then." " You want a drink with that?" " Strawberry lemonade." " All right, 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 snatching' something better than Marlo's lunch order." "There's no code that I can tell." "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." "Take this mess down." "Let's get outta here." "I also have five calls, 30 to 40 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, 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, throw them your way." "The homeless murders?" "How does that case tangle in with this?" "Hard to explain." "Remember what the DNC folks told me two years ago?" "How to take the statehouse?" "Build something downtown and stick your name on it, get the crime to go down, and stay away from schools." " And keep my boyish good looks." " One out of four ain't bad." "Jesus." "Did we have to schedule this the same day as New Westport?" "My news isn't even going to make the front of the local section." "The ribbon-cutting was scheduled two weeks ago." "No one saw the homeless thing coming." "First of all, I'm surprised to see so much media here." "A press event held earlier today to announce the revitalization of yet another part of our city was not so well attended." "It would appear that media attention is always focusing on the negatives in Baltimore, but you aren't around when we're making real progress." "Still, I'm glad to see so many of you here." "Some of you representing not just our local media, but national attention to this problem." "Thank you for caring enough about our most vulnerable citizens to address yourselves to this tragedy." "Our homeless citizens, those who have fallen through the cracks of our society, those who command the least of our attentions and efforts, they seemingly have little to endear themselves to politicians." "They don't vote, by and large." "They don't contribute to campaigns." "They offer little to a city's tax base, and to the extent that our government is made aware of their existence, it responds by trying to mitigate the damage done by their presence." "We open a food bank here, a shelter there." "We try to move them away from downtown, away from our communal areas, away from our schools, away from our homes." "If you were to judge our society by the manner in which we treat those lost on our streets, we would have cause to be shamed." "Well, I am, God forgive me, a politician." "But I ran for public office because I believe that there is a different way of governing." "And I believe that in the end we will be judged not by the efforts we make on behalf of those who vote for us, who contribute to our campaigns, or those who provide for our tax base." "I believe that we will be judged by what we provide to the weakest and most vulnerable." "That is the test." "That is my test." "Somebody is killing homeless men in this city." "Taking the lives of fellow citizens who do not have the means or the strength to properly protect themselves." "They will be stopped." "We will do everything in our power to stop them." "You have my word on this." "Thank you, Mr. Mayor." " What got into you?" " What?" "I want to assure the public that we are doing everything possible in our power to apprehend this subject." "Homicide detectives are working non-stop." "District officers are in contact with the agencies that work with the homeless." "I cannot go into specifics of the investigation but, with that caveat, I will take questions." "Commissioner, is there any connection between these murders and those in the vacant homes last year?" "No connection." "Commissioner, are you asking the FBI to join in the investigation?" "I think deputy commissioner Daniels is in a position to elaborate on that." "We'll take whatever help is offered." "Our detectives will work closely with the behavioral analysis unit at Quantico..." "Deputy, even with all the resources at your disposal, isn't it extremely difficult to catch a serial killer?" "Our ability to secure genetic material and the growing DNA data bank are assets unavailable to us even a few years ago." "Our ability to effectively use resources has been increased with the aid of sophisticated computer software." "And we have some of the best criminal investigators in the nation working 24/7." "As the mayor made very clear a moment ago, this is now a priority for the department." "Has a note been found at any of the scenes?" "I'm not at liberty to go into any details of the investigation at this time." "You want me to hang?" "He told you who I am, right?" "Son, the thing about murder is it never goes off the books." "I mean, we work on 'em for weeks, months, years." "We keep on with it until finally someone decides they've had enough, until we get the right word from the right person." "And you know what happens then?" "When a case does go down... all those people who kept quiet about it, who lied about it, all of them who thought it wasn't coming back on 'em, they end up catching' a charge." "And they get time behind that." "Time?" "You gonna give me time?" "If you know something about that boy Lex getting shot, now is your last chance to speak to that." " You gave a statement last year..." " Why don't you promise to get me outta here?" "That's what y'all do, ain't it?" "Lie to dumbass niggers?" "Yo, y'all need to get this police out my face before I bank his ass." "You're a natural, kiddo." "You had them eating out of your hand." "Shit, I was just following the mayor's lead." "He wants a full-court press, right?" "We can add a detective or two." "And you can ask patrol to concentrate on posts where vagrants congregate." "But other than that, deputy, the cupboard is bare." " But Carcetti..." " Make no mistake." "He wants us to solve the murders." "He just doesn't want it to cost." "Don't look so shocked." "You're runnin' with the big dogs now." "Isn't it enough that we're up on the killer's cellphone?" "Couldn't you track him on the GPS chip?" "He's using a burner and we suspect he's taking out the battery between calls." "And there's nothing to stop him from changing phones, calling the reporter from a new number." "So you want to tap the reporter's phone as well." "It stands to reason that we should monitor this thing from both ends." " It's what we would normally do." " Nothing about this is normal." "A Baltimore Sun reporter's phone is problematic." "We need to strike a balance between your needs as investigators and the First Amendment rights of the Sun and its sources." "The First Amendment does not guarantee privacy, your Honor." "Legal precedent clearly indicates..." " Look I'm not saying that we can't, but..." " But what?" "Until we get the sense that your suspect is changing phones," "I'm not inclined to look with favor on tapping the Baltimore Sun's telecommunications." " We're afraid to piss them off?" " Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel-full." " Christ." " Very well, judge." "How many enemies do you need?" "Deputy." " Where did you get all this?" " Darling, you do not want to know." "What's up with you?" "Got all 22 out of the drawer?" " Workin' the whole mess at once." " I'm trying to see 'em fresh." "25." "My triple." "It comes back to Marlo and his people." "For sure?" "A good informant tells me so." "Says one of my vics was talking bad about Mr. Stanfield, who took it personal." "Killed him, his girl, his muscle." "Left the little kids alive, so I guess he ain't all bad." "People out there so scared of this motherfucker," "I can't get close to an eyewitness on any of it." " Where you at with the rest of these cases?" " We don't even have lab work on 14 of these bodies?" "A year later I'm still walking in written requests into Landsman, who just files them away in his drawer." "McNulty would've called a news reporter." "I am not him." "Well, what would the Bunk do?" "Take no for a fucking answer?" "We had cutbacks, you know that." "We lost three or four trace examiners." "Lost half our clerical." "The freezer went bad, we lost four months of blood samples." "Did you know that?" "Four months of evidence and they still haven't replaced my damn icebox." "My heart pumps purple piss for you." "Now, I got the worst mass murder in B-more history and you can't get the trace work back to me inside of a year?" "C'mon, Ron..." "Look..." "You can't go to the press." "I mean, heads will roll if this gets out." "It isn't anyone's fault." "In fact, it's a little bit on you, in a way." "The fuck you say?" "After Annette took retirement, the casework got backed up worse than ever, right?" "Well, we put in to fill the lab assistant slot, but with the cutbacks, the best they could give us was a temp." " A temp?" " Yeah." "No medical." "No pension." "A temp hire to get us over for a while." "Look, I'll show you something..." "She was assigned to sort and file the individual trace elements..." "Hair, fiber mostly..." "You know, from each of the 14 scenes." "So what's the problem?" "In the initial paperwork, you wrote out all 22 CC numbers, right?" " Right." " But in the supplemental requests, you put all the incidents under the initial CC and then you wrote, "et al," remember?" " So?" " She didn't know what "et al" meant." "And she sorted everything under the single complaint number." "You don't fuckin' mean..." "We have no idea which one of your scenes any of this shit came from." "We don't have a clue." "Actually, except for this she's been a pretty good employee." " Surveillance teams." " Two each on 12-hour shifts." "I need them to set up on certain locations common to our cases." "C'mon, Jay." "You heard the mayor." "This case is a red ball." "That it is." "You can have Greggs, if you want." "The last time I offered her up, you kicked her back to her own casework." "Other than a second detective, you are on your own." " So it's all bullshit." " I dunno." "I thought the mayor gave a very nice speech." "I, for one, was moved." "Much like the bull to which you just referred." " Tell you one thing..." " What's that?" "Motherfucker whose got the connect, he the one that did Joe." "Oh, no doubt." "Y'all know the co-op took some hits." "Joe." "Hungry Man." "Good people, especially Joe." "Their passing' was for real, cold blooded." "I know what you thinkin', so I'm a put it out there..." "I'm responsible." "A week or so back, I made a move on Omar, with Joe's approval." "The faggot ain't had heart enough to come at me, so he come at those close to me." "Now I'm doubling' the bounty..." "Hundred large for a whiff of that dicksuck." "Two hundred fifty for his head." " What about the connect?" " I got that covered." "And in light of that fact, I'm a take it upon myself to conduct this meet." "Slim, I want you take over Hungry Man's slice of the cake." "Meanin' no disrespect, but I ain't cut out to be no CEO." " Cheese, then." " No problem, man." "Got you covered." "Until we settle up with Omar, I think it's best we suspend these meets." "In fact, I ain't really one for meets no how." "Anybody got a problem here on out, bring it to me, or sit on that shit." "Those of you on the Westside who need to re-up, holler at my man Monk." "He gonna handle supply over there." "On the Eastside, Cheese." "One more thing." "Price of the brick going up." "Thirty more." "All right." "Enough of this shit." "What?" "Next year for the schools." "From now until December, we're all about the plight of the homeless." "The great whiting has spoken." "I appealed to Klebanow half hour ago but he gave me the thumbs down." "I'm sorry." "Check it out, people." "Our Metro desk has some national profile." "We're being careful to cooperate with the investigators in every way." "My newspaper has no desire to get between the police and the suspect." "But still, wouldn't you agree it's an incredible moment for any journalist to come face to face with that type of pure evil like the son of Sam." "That makes you the Jimmy Breslin of Baltimore." "Well, no, I wouldn't say that." "I mean..." "But knowing you have been in contact with a killer, are you at all concerned about continuing to report from the street?" "No, not at all." "I mean, this is what we do." "As a reporter, you expect to be in harm's way at some points." " It's what we do." " Agreed." "It's what we do." "But very rarely does a reporter end up being in the middle of a story - an ongoing story - about a murderer who is still at large and posing a severe and deadly risk to the..." "You shoulda heard Phelan this morning." "Too scared to tap the newspaper phones they might shit on him for it." "Fuckin' hack judge." "What would you want with more wires?" "We got all we need." "I don't want another wire." "It's the principle of the thing..." "It just pissed me off listening to him." "Oh yeah, no surveillance cars." "They won't go beyond me and Greggs." "You and Sydnor will have to work it as best you can for right now." "Assholes." "They need another body, don't they?" "I'll call our man in the Southern." "I can take it from here." "Y'all can bounce." "All right, boss." "What up, Rick?" "Just like ol' times for me and you." " Whatever you want it's yours, all right?" " Tonight, I'm just gonna take yo' jump..." " And leave you with a little something." " What's that?" "My word in your ear." "I'm callin' Marlo a straight bitch." "I'm sayin' it don't take much to shoot down a blind man." "And as for him stepping' to me, you tell that dude he ain't got the heart." "All right." "You tell that man I'm in the street, waiting." "Just like a little bitch, he ain't nowhere to be found." "I'll tell him." "I will." "Pick up your keys and go on inside, yo." "You kill Joe?" "Hungry?" "Didn't think so." "What now?" "There's more than one way to skin a case." "Already ran them for priors, right?" "Priors, yeah." "But I'm gonna run every name you guys developed through the entire database." "Not just for priors, but for anything at all in the miles system." "Court appearances, parole, probation, gun permits, DOC, open balls." " You're playing long shots, huh?" " Darlin', I'm playin' the hand I've been dealt." "An H-file?" " Who caught the case?" " Worden." "Other shift." "Stepfather." "Beaten to death." "They interviewed the mother, but no one else in the household." "Doesn't exactly fit with the others, does it?" "A straight up ass-whoopin' in an alley doesn't seem like Marlo Stanfield." " No, it doesn't." " But you're gonna work it anyway." "In the Pentecostal church where I was given religion, it would have been said the spirit was on you yesterday." " It got good to me." " Let praises be." "It pissed me off that on top of everything else I gotta deal with, some nutjob starts killing homeless guys." "Fuck already, how many shitbowls are there?" "He's right though." "You were great." "That passion was just the thing." " You think..." " We step out on this issue, it could provide some national presence..." "Didn't the governor scrap the emergency medical and housing program last year?" "What was it, TEMHA?" "Replaced it with T-Dap, which cuts funding to anyone who doesn't qualify for federal support." "It's worse than that:" "He froze eligibility by disallowing new applications, which put all kinda folks out on the street." "So we slam the Republican for sticking it to the poor." "It plays." "Nationally, you're taking up the cause of the forgotten..." "And no one is ever in favor of homelessness..." "Statewide, you're going up against the fella who tore up the safety net." "Homelessness." "I'll be damned." " Base to 2306." " Go ahead, Lester." " You see anybody using a cellphone?" " Wait one." "Negative." "Hold on." "Somebody's here." "Lester?" "Can't get used to how empty this place feels nowadays." "True, but you'd be surprised what you can get done when no one's looking." "You'll need to serve these." "Running out of time." "I'll get right on it." "There's a couple of loose ends we should cover as well." " Now?" " If not now, when?" "The trial date is coming up on us fast." "Right." "But it's..." " Is it something I said?" " No..." "Sydnor is bringing in a CI." "And if you're here..." "Oh, shit." "I'm sorry..." "I'll leave you my list, OK?" "No problem." "We'll get right on it." "I'm sorry, Lester, if I was intruding." "You couldn't know." "So why you here?" "If this about Michael and what he into, y'all should know he don't live here no more." "Actually, I'm following up on your man's case." "You spoke to Detective Worden when it happened." "He was your boyfriend, right?" "When he weren't in jail..." "Father to my youngest." "But you know how he died." "Beaten bad." "Crime of passion, as we say." "Didn't seem like he was home long enough to get somebody that riled at him." "Unless, of course, it was over you." "You sayin' I know somethin' about that?" "Lady, let's put our cards on the table." "I been in this game longer than a little bit, and there's one thing I know." "A murder like this, there's a woman at the center of it." "I don't know nothin'." "You know my gut tells me that you do." "And I'll tell you what..." "We're gonna take a ride downtown, let you talk to the grand jury." "You're not straight with them, they'll give you a material witness warrant." "And you sit over at woman's detention for a couple of weeks." "It's amazing what it does for the grieving process." " Get your things." " I ain't goin' nowhere." "It's me or the wagon." "Detective, I swear, I ain't in this." "It ain't me you wanna talk to." "It's the boy, he know." " He running' with them who did it." " You just tryin' to put me off the scent." "You gotta believe me." "He told me Devar wasn't comin' home, 'fore we even knowed he was dead." "You said he's runnin' with them?" "Runnin' with who?" "Chris, Snoop, all them gangsters." "Who else doin' all the killin' around here?" "Let me see your camera." " Add a minute-six to your times." " Got it." "Here it is." "Look at this." "Single ring." "Connection." "Silence." "What do you have?" "I took these three." "They're just hangin' around." "What time did Monk leave?" "1:24." "Two minutes later." "It's not what Marlo's sayin', it's what he's sendin'." " Look at Monk." " Yeah." "Text message." "Text?" "Need I remind you, Detective, these young men are products of Baltimore City schools." "Besides, look how far away he's holding his phone." "Too far away to be reading a text." "Nah, son." "Pictures." "Pictures..." "What the fuck you lookin' at?" "You know what they do, right?" "They tease you." "They let you get close and just when you're about to pull the case, they rip the fuckin' rug out from under you." "I'm not lying." "We got a fuckin' serial killer on the loose." "You didn't know that?" "It's in the goddamn paper." "What support do I get?" "One fuckin' detective." "They wanna play their simple-ass games, fine." "But I gotta do what I gotta do." "Excuse me." "Yeah, Oscar." "Beautiful." "Absolutely." "Where?" "On my way." "Man, you can't let it get to you like this." "Why don't we go buy up a bunch of toys and take 'em to your kids?" "You ain't hearing' me." "How can I go near my people with Omar on us?" "How he gonna find out about them?" "How we find out about the blind man?" "Get." "It's Omar!" "You too, shorty." "Omar!" "It's Omar!" "Money a little late today." "That buckshot in your leg should help you explain yourself to Marlo." "As for them other two they gonna wish that I'd peppered them a bit." "Now you make sure you tell old Marlo I burned the money." "'Cause it ain't about that paper." "It's about me hurtin' his people, messin' with his world." "Tell that boy he ain't man enough to come down to the street with Omar." "You tell him that!" "My sergeant and two side partners got here before me." "Then the shift commander showed." "Now the duty officer is on his way." "For a DOA?" "Well, you and Lester started some shit here, son." "Now a DOA call brings everyone in a heartbeat." "God bless." " Pictures?" " Photographs on cellphones." "Now that means new PC to capture the photos and new equipment that could do it." "How do I write that into my bullshit homeless killer's MO?" "When we started this, you said all we needed were some bugs, a camera or two, and in a couple of weeks, we'd have them." "That's what you said." "So I cranked up my bullshit to pay for that but no, then you needed a wiretap." "So I went along, I got you the wiretap." "Then you ask for surveillance teams, but before I can get to that, you came to me with this." "I mean, what the fuck?" "I gotta tell you, Lester, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I can see why Daniels cringed every time you opened your fucking mouth." "You're a supervisor's nightmare." "I'm just following the thread." "Say we get you the intercept on your pictures, will that give us Marlo?" "It'll be coded, probably, but I'm sure we can break it." "That'll tell us how they do business, and usually, that's enough." "Or not." "But the truth is, I'm running Sydnor ragged just staying on a couple of mopes and monitoring calls." "Now, when we're up on their code, we're gonna need more manpower to run down a stash or a re-up." " We can't do it all." " I can't juke this thing any more than I have." "Last night, half the police department turned up at Oscar's crime scene before I could get there." "We can't make another murder." "Thanks for the milk." "What's a donut without milk?" "So you were talking about your second tour..." " The bad one." " Yeah." "Second tour fucked me up good." "But they don't wanna hear it." "Who doesn't?" "Mostly, it's command and the senior EMS." "They put it down that marines don't get P.T.S.D." "But they do." "Can you tell me what happened?" "Terry, can you talk about it?" "We had a month left on the tour, working an S-and-A mission outside Fallujah." "I was assistant team leader." "Our M-niner-niner-eights were retrofitted with up-armor kits." "M-niner-niner-eight?" "A humvee, sorry." "They're big on nomenclature." "Anyway we finished our sweep, headed back in, right?" "It was all good." "Then, bam..." "Our lead vehicle was hit with an elevated I.E.D." "The blast tore the M-fifty gunner in half." "Flipped the humvee like a matchbox car." "Driver lost both his hands." "Blood shooting out all over." "He's fuckin' laughin'." "Saying over and over, "Look, Ma, no hands."" "It's the laughing I can't shake." "Weird." "'Cause he's OK, you know?" "I mean, he's better than me." "Got himself a couple of prosthetic mitts, eighty thousand apiece." "What happened next?" "Nothing really." "We pushed out, secured the perimeter." "Corpsman did what he could, an' we waited for the casevac." "I'm not looking to shit on another guy's copy," "I just wanted you to know this was out there." "I'm at a community meeting in Bel Air-Edison to hear about school zoning and this woman talked my ear off about this." "She said the kids never saw a dime." "I mean, I'm hoping this is all bullshit." " Hey, Scott." "How's it coming?" " Pretty good." "You seen the art?" "Yeah." "Good stuff." "Listen, got a complaint about a story you wrote a couple weeks ago." "The woman who died from an allergic reaction to seafood." " Remember?" " What about it?" "Lady knows the dead woman sister says our story made a lot of money for those kids." " A scholarship fund we wrote up." " So?" "She says the sister has a history of fraud, convictions on it." "She says all the money went to Atlantic City casinos" " and kids never saw a dime." " Christ, who the fuck..." "I know." "It's probably some old biddy talkin' about stuff she don't know, but maybe you should go back and check with the family, see if we don't get took on this, huh?" "No, no." "Not now." "After you file." "Just make a couple calls, huh?" " This is kidnapping." " Actually, I'm not sure." "I asked him if he wanted $100 to go someplace for dinner and talk" " and he walked to my car." " You give him the hundred?" "Stuffed it in his jacket." "He's fine, Lester." "He's great." " Think he'll find his way back home?" " Eventually." "By then, we'll be done with Marlo, we'll have shut this thing down." "As far as what happened to this guy..." "They'll write it off as some fraternity prank." " Does he know we're cops?" " No." "Even if he figures it out, who's gonna believe him?" "He's nuts." " How do you know he's nuts?" " First of all, just look at him." "He's fucking bouncing off the walls." "Second of all..." "I got his scrip." "I called the university ER." "It's an anti-psychotic." "So..." "I took his I.D.," "I'll scratch his name off the scrip and leave him with this..." "I got that one from the first homeless death Oscar gave us." "The one that was too rigored." "Donald somebody or other." "It had him in a Cleveland, Ohio shelter." "McNulty, you are deserving of serious psychological study." "You need PC to intercept cellphone photos." "Well here it is, right here." "We send photos of this guy all ribboned up from a dry cellphone to that goofy reporter, along with a message bitching about his stories." ""I ain't no pervert," or whatever." "Now, the killer says, you ain't gonna find no more bodies." "Only photos of the victims..." "Before they disappear." "Look at this poor sucker." "I don't believe we're gonna do this." "He disappears, the city goes batshit." "You get your photo intercepts, and when we need to run down one of Marlo's re-ups, you got all the manpower you need." " And Marlo falls." " Falls hard." "Don't fucking tell me you mislabeled this, too." "I want comparisons between known suspects and the DNA from this scene." "By the looks of it, we got a whole lot of DNA outta this mess." " Now, motherfucker." "Right now." " Top of my list." "As soon as we work through all the trace from the homeless killings." "That's the priority, Bunk." " The homeless killings." " Everything is backed up behind that, sorry." "Your boy McNulty has everyone's attention right now." "So it's Larry, huh?" "OK, Larry." "You're with good people here." "It's all gonna be great." "You're gonna like this place." "It's warm, they got nice beds." "And best of all, I gave you cash money just for walking in the door." "Come on, Larry." "It's gonna be fine." "I promise." "You feel up for trying Clay yourself?" "I mean, it's been a while since you tried a criminal case personally." "It sends a statement, I think." "We should start with our witness list." "See if we can pare that down any, out of respect for the distracted nature of a Baltimore jury." "First, there's something else I need to bring up." " Old grand jury stuff?" " Sealed indictments." "Sealed transcripts." "Dozens of them." "Pulled from the desk of a shot-to-death drug dealer in east Baltimore." "The deputy ops brought me those." "We have a leak." "And he showed up, outside where I work." "He was confused." "Lost I think." "So I brought him here." "Donald, where you from?" "Tell the lady, Donald." "Baltimore." "But he told me he came from Cleveland." "Donald, do you have identification?" "This does say Cleveland." "Donald, why don't we get you something to eat?" "It's OK." "Come on." " We're good to go?" " It's great, Gus." "It sings." " Hey, Scotty boy." " Hey." "Hey." "Great piece." "I mean this one really feels like the real deal." " It's great work." " Thanks." "What I like most about it is that you didn't overwrite it." "No extra color." "No puffy adjectives." "Just tight, declarative sentences." "You really let this ex-marine tell his story." " Thanks, Gus." " Hey, Mr. Slot man, read it and weep." "And I mean that literally." "Oh, Scott." "Did you get a chance to drop a couple calls on that complaint?" "It's bullshit." "I talked to people in the neighborhood." "Sister's good people, but there's another woman up there, unrelated, keeps getting arrested for kiting checks and stuff." "She uses the sister's name every time she gets locked up." "She's done it like three or four times now." "Yeah, it's crazy." "But sister's clean." "Everyone says so." "OK." "Is there anything else I can do for him?" "No, we've got it." "But thanks for bringing him in." "Most people, they just ignore them." "I just want to get your paperwork taken care of."