The Wire “Old Cases”

Following last episode’s fiascos on the part of both the police raid and Omar robbing D’Angelo, this episode seems to be all about consequences.

I mean, we get a little more about Omar.  What does he do with the stuff he stole?  He seems to mostly give it away.  Omar’s some sort of urban Robin Hood.

And Avon wants him dead, so much so he doubles the bounty when he learns Omar not only robbed him, but he’s gay on top of that.  Getting robbed is one thing. Getting robbed by a gay man is much, much worse.  And with both the cops and Omar coming through, Stringer suggests D’Angelo might have a leak in his part of the organization.

But word on the street about Omar tells Greggs and McNulty Omar would make a great witness if they could find him.  Heck, Omar even had a legendary brother who tried to kill himself with a weak gun to avoid prison, and everyone who wasn’t Greggs knew that story.

Further consequences come for the cop that got knocked over during the raid.  He was one of the more worthless members of Daniels’ detail, so he’s using the injuries he suffered to retire on disability.  He even urges the other worthless guy in the detail to suffer an “accident” by falling down the stairs at the office and doing the same.  And  no, Prez is not the worthless one.  He’s good at puzzles.  That’s more than we can say about these two guys whose names I never bothered to learn.

Over in homicide, McNulty is going through old cases that may or may not connect to the Barksdale organization.  His sergeant tosses him one of a college aged woman who was shot at home and had a tenuous connection to D’Angelo.  Checking at the crime scene, he and Bunk find a bullet and a casing outside.  But was it D’Angelo?  Actually, it was.  D’Angelo tells the story of the hit on this girl, a former girlfriend of Avon’s who threatened to go to the cops when Avon got a new girl, to show the younger members of his squad that whatever they did that got them sent to juvie is nothing compared to what he’s seen.  They respect that.

Oh yeah, one of the low rises crew was in juvie.  That would be Bodie.  He’s the one who knocked over the bad cop and got a beatin’ for it from Greggs, Carver, and Herc.  He didn’t stay at juvie very long, since escaping was a simple matter of pushing a bucket in front of him to the front door and walking right out since no one looks twice at a janitor.  Or a hitchhiker either, since Carver and Herc drove past him on their way to pick him up for questioning.

Herc does show a more decent side when the dimwitted duo check Bodie’s grandma’s house.  He apologizes for swearing and learns a bit from the old lady who apparently is not her grandson’s biggest fan.  Nothing that could find the kid, but she clearly doesn’t like what he does.

McNulty then has to take Bubbles with him to his son’s soccer game.  Yeah, taking the obvious drug addict to the suburbs will endear him to his ex-wife.  Wait, no it won’t.  Bubbles sees a place that makes his own life look worse then it did before, and that was just a bunch of white kids playing soccer.

Say, what’s up with Lester anyway?  That phone number he found during the raid was for D’Angelo’s pager.  Pagers are what the crew uses since they can’t be traced like cell phones.  And calling the number shows D’Angelo go right to a pay phone.  Now the detail has something that can put a wire on.  And since everything else isn’t working, then they have legal justification for putting a wire tap on every pay phone in the low rises.  Since when was Lester such a good cop?

Well, he always was, but like McNulty, he had a habit of angering his superiors.  Pawn division was his punishment, and after thirteen years (and four months), he was taken out and can show his skills a bit.  Lester was a good homicide cop, but he didn’t play the game right, and he was punished for it.

Yeah, that sounds like something that could happen to McNulty.