The Wire Page 9

  The choice was to give up names or take the charge.

  “I gave him the names,” said Bubbles. “And he paid me a few dollars.”

  Soon enough the retired sneak-thief was churning out information on burglaries, robberies, and fugitives, making enough to keep his habit going, and no one on the street was ever the wiser.

  “I was careful,” he said.

  In 1976, Bubbles found himself playing the escapee, having walked away from a state work camp for convicts and a seven-year sentence on drug charges.

  A cop familiar with Bubbles’s usefulness arranged to have the drug sentence commuted and the escape charge dropped. That’s when he went to work more or less full-time for the Baltimore Police Department’s escape unit.

  Bubbles was loyal, but not without testing his new employer’s commitment.

  At an early meeting with the escape squad, Bubbles showed up with a baby in his arms, his son. The whole time he was talking with the cops outside of police headquarters on Fayette Street, he held the infant tight.

  Later, after the working arrangements had proved satisfactory, Bubbles explained the baby’s presence.

  “I figured they were just going to lock me up … so if it was going to be this way, I was going to hand the baby to the cop that looked the fastest. Then I was gonna outrun the others.”

  Bubbles was the guy with the photographic memory who always blended in with the action, whether selling cantaloupes from the back of a wagon or stealing new copper downspouts. No one paid much attention to him while he was paying attention to everything.

  At first, he’d turn guys in by name. In time, he’d memorized the escape unit’s mug-shot binder and was turning in wanted men by their faces.

  Because he only got paid when the mark was caught, he complained when the cops failed to show on the right corner at the right time. Like the time he was working a section of Amsterdam Avenue in Upper Manhattan, called Little Baltimore for the surplus of Crabtown gangsters who’d go there when sought by authorities back home.

  As they’d done many times before, detectives put their best informant on a bus to the Big Apple, hoping to fill their quota from the Amsterdam Avenue corners. Once, however, with a high-profile escapee in view, the New York Feds kept grabbing the wrong guy.

  Eventually, Bubbles gathered up a bunch of hats, hit the hot corner, and went to work. Pretending to be selling stylish lids, he put a red cap on the right man and drifted into the scenery as the agents finally grabbed their fugitive.

  Introduced by Baltimore homicide detective Ed Burns, who had worked with Bubbles for many years, Simon was able to sit and talk with Bubbles only twice.

  On a third visit to the West Baltimore walk-up, the reporter, hoping to write a magazine article on Bubbles and his notable career, encountered an empty apartment. The landlord confirmed that Bubbles had died in his bed a few days prior.

  Although proud of having fashioned a career that avoided direct violence, Bubbles told Simon in their last interview, somewhat sheepishly, that he’d “killed two people once.”

  There was a stickup man in the projects who kept taking dope from him when he was trying to make a little bit on the side.

  “Every week he robbed me,” said Bubbles. “And every time, he would take not only what I was selling, but the couple bags I kept in my pocket up here for myself.”

  After the third or fourth robbery, Bubbles switched the heroin in his pocket with battery acid.

  “Eventually [he] fired it and got dead then and there. Another someone died because they fired it with him … I felt bad for that person, but, hey, it’s all in the game.”

  •

  There was so much in the game meticulously diagrammed by The Wire that Royo and some of his fellow actors had doubts that the pilot would be picked up as a series, much less last five seasons.

  “We always thought The Wire would never fly,” said Royo. “It’s long, it’s low and it has too many characters.”

  But it flew in such a graceful, feathered arc that Royo – who by the show’s end was pestering the producers for a Bubbles love scene, “a little cardboard box make-out session,” – found plenty of work when The Wire left the air.

  “I was getting arrested on Law & Order and I saw that the hallway was clear and was going to make a run for it,” said Royo, who in May 2009 was filmed in George Lucas’s remake of the Tuskegee Airmen story in Prague.

  “The [Law & Order] producers said, ‘This isn’t The Wire, Andre. When you see our cops coming you just put out your hands and let them cuff you.’”

  Royo says he will carry Bubbles with him forever, having come to see the character “as someone trying to hold onto his goodness through all of it.

  “Drugs are destroying his mind and his body and his ego, but not his good spirit.”

  And apparently not his legs, favored limbs of addicts once they’ve blown through all of the veins in their arms.

  In a scene where his shopping cart dents a car owned by Marlo’s muscle, Bubbles and his sidekick Johnny are facing the gun until the kingpin tells his men to either “do it or don’t” but he’s got to roll. The thugs extract humiliation as payment, and Bubbles and Johnny are next seen pushing the grocery cart in their underwear.

  “The producers never saw me without my pants,” said Royo, without irony regarding the casting couch. “My legs are in good shape and huge.

  “I told [the director] that if a junkie is carrying around radiators all day, he might have some legs on him, but they still didn’t think it looked right so I just walked through the scene fast.”

  The beauty of Bubbles plays across Royo’s face through large, tired eyes; in the subtle “Are you fucking kidding me?” look he gives a fellow junkie when he realizes the man can’t read.

  “Ed Burns told me I had a Chaplinesque quality. That’s the sort of thing you don’t hear in this business,” said Royo, who in one memorable scene takes in the world from a park bench without saying a word.

  Like Michael Kenneth Williams, who played Omar, Royo was told early on that his character may not survive more than seven or eight episodes.

  But both proved to be of service to the story from beginning to end.

  “The first time in my acting career that I got to follow a [true] journey,” said Royo. “Bubbles wakes up every day with a big, big wish-list. He needs his dope, but he still tries to complete the rest of the list, maybe one day get around to seeing his kid, seeing his sister.

  “He finds pleasure in helping the cops. It ain’t just about the $20 to get high. If you really want money for dope, you can do it a million different ways for a lot more money than snitching.”

  And then there was the day that Royo won the kind of prize they don’t award in Hollywood.

  “We were filming on the street; I was in makeup but away from the cameras,” he said. “This guy comes up to me and handed me some drugs. He said, ‘Here, man, you need a fix more than I do.’

  “That was my street Oscar.”

  episode ten

  THE COST

  “And then he dropped the bracelets …” - GREGGS

  Directed by Brad Anderson

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

  McNulty catches up with Wallace and breaks him down in the interrogation room, implicating Wee-Bey and Stringer Bell in Brandon’s murder. Without money for witness protection, Daniels stashes Wallace at his grandmother’s house on the Eastern Shore, more or less the Mississippi of Maryland.

  An unrelated Maryland State Police undercover investigation nabs Wendell “Orlando” Blocker – the frontman for Barksdale’s nightclub and a gangster hanger-on – for attempting to buy narcotics.

  Cut loose by Barksdale and with no other protection, Orlando tries to avoid jail by making a controlled drug buy from the Barksdale organization. Detectives are dubious that Orlando can get anyone above a lower-level lieutenant in the room for a buy, but Burrell, seeing a quick end to the case, approves the
operation.

  Bubbles, worn down by the suicide-by-sandpaper life of the street, resolves to get clean and prevails on his estranged sister to let him shake it out in her basement. He appeals to a sympathetic Greggs for help.

  At the same time, Omar is approached – through Proposition Joe – about a possible truce with the Barksdale group. McNulty and Greggs put a wire on Omar, hoping to get Stringer Bell talking about drugs and/ or murder in the ensuing meet with Omar. Stringer proves too smart for that.

  Having used Omar as much as possible, McNulty puts him on a bus to New York, if only to keep one of his two witnesses in the Gant murder alive.

  The detectives plan their controlled buy with Orlando carefully. The buy proves to be a setup, and both Orlando and Detective Greggs, who is with him as a “club girl,” are ambushed in a darkened alley. Orlando is killed, Greggs severely wounded.

  episode eleven

  THE HUNT

  “Dope on the damn table …” - DANIELS

  Directed by Steve Shill

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

  Working back from the scene of Orlando’s murder and info from the continuing wiretap, detectives are able to identify two possible shooters. Greggs, unconscious in the hospital, cannot help.

  Daniels is now all-in with the investigation in the wake of Greggs’s shooting and fends off political interference as best he can, even as Deputy Commissioner Burrell orders premature raids. When Daniels tries to hold out one location for further investigation – the main Barksdale stash house – he is again ordered to do otherwise by Burrell.

  Who is the leak in the detail providing top brass with day-by-day info?

  The raids put dope and cash and some guns on the table, but the wiretap is now useless as the Barksdale organization has changed its method of communication.

  Bubbles, now without Greggs’s help, stumbles in his effort to stay clean, particularly when he is pushed back into the project world as an informant.

  As the investigation into Greggs’s shooting progresses, Wee-Bey is forced to flee to Philadelphia with D’Angelo’s help. Barksdale’s nephew fears that his uncle’s efforts to clean up the organization may include more executions, including his own.

  In the end, the department congratulates itself on the successful raids in response to the shooting of an officer while Daniels and his officers know the job is far from finished.

  episode twelve

  CLEANING UP

  “This is me, yo, right here.” - WALLACE

  Directed by Clement Virgo

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

  Bored with the country and unsure of his place in the world, Wallace returns to The Pit – much to the consternation of D’Angelo, who knows that his uncle, having learned of the wiretaps, is cleaning house.

  D’Angelo is ordered to go to New York on a resupply mission as the Barksdale organization struggles to maintain its hold on the projects in the wake of the police raids. Though the wiretap is now useless, detectives manage – with the help of Shardene – to place a hidden camera and microphone into the back room of Barksdale’s club. They then overhear the conversation between Avon Barksdale and his nephew, implicating both.

  New Jersey troopers catch D’Angelo dirty on the turnpike, but he refuses to cooperate. McNulty leaves him with this to consider: Wallace has been found shot to death in the projects.

  Alienated by the hit on Wallace, D’Angelo argues with Stringer Bell and the lawyer Levy when they arrive in New Jersey, repeatedly asking Stringer about Wallace’s whereabouts. Stringer, who ordered Bodie and Poot to murder their friend, will not answer.

  As Deputy Burrell tries to put the case down for good, Daniels is summoned to meet state senator Clay Davis, who assures him that he is neither corrupt nor profiting from Barksdale drug money.

  With Greggs still clinging to life, Daniels will not be deterred, even at the risk of his career. Burrell orders the arrest of Avon Barksdale on a charge connected to D’Angelo’s arrest in New Jersey.

  McNulty and Daniels go to the club and cuff Barksdale. But they are forced to leave Stringer Bell on the street – he has not implicated himself on the wire – and the death of Wallace has made it impossible to charge him in the murder of Brandon.

  episode thirteen

  SENTENCING

  “All in the game…” - TRADITIONAL, WEST BALTIMORE

  Directed by Tim Van Patten

  Written by David Simon & Ed Burns

  Frustrated by their department’s unwillingness to pursue the case beyond the arrest of Avon Barksdale on a minor charge, Daniels, McNulty, and Freamon try to take the investigation to federal agents.

  They quickly realize that the US attorney is more interested in political corruption than inner-city murder and drug trafficking, particularly since Freamon has connected the Barksdale ring’s political contributions to real estate holdings in a government-funded redevelopment area downtown.

  The detectives back away from the Feds, but their approach is soon known to Rawls, and, ultimately, Burrell.

  Greggs regains consciousness and can identify the heavy-set Little Man (played by Micaiah Jones) as one of her shooters, but not the second, even though Bunk gives her the heavy thumb on Wee-Bey’s mug shot.

  The case breaks wide open when D’Angelo begins to cooperate in New Jersey, consenting to a meeting with Assistant State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman and the detectives in which he recounts the violence, including Brandon’s murder, the slaying of the young woman in the apartment, and other brutalities.

  D’Angelo wants immunity and a new life and the detectives, seeing both Barksdale and Bell vulnerable to weighty charges, are ready to agree.

  It falls apart when D’Angelo’s mother – Avon’s sister, Brianna -arrives to make it clear to her son what he owes to his family. She succeeds and D’Angelo backs off from the promised cooperation.

  Barksdale’s lawyer arranges a structured plea agreement in which all of those arrested plead guilty instead of subjecting themselves to further investigation via a trial. While Avon faces a minimum sentence, D’Angelo gets 20 years for the New Jersey bust and Wee-Bey takes life without parole for owning up to a number of murders, some of which he clearly did not commit.

  Now the number one man on the street, Stringer Bell sets up business in a funeral home as the drug dealing continues unabated. Bodie is put in charge of a tower and Poot runs The Pit.

  Greggs is left to recover from her wounds. Freamon, rescued from oblivion by the case, is reassigned to the homicide unit. Burrell’s informant in the detail unit proves to be Detective Carver, who is rewarded with a promotion to sergeant and the contempt of Daniels.

  And McNulty?

  Go back to the pilot episode, the scene in which Detective Sergeant Landsman holds up $20 and declares: “I’ll go this against ten, you’re riding the boat, midnight shift.”

  Q&A WITH LITTLE MELVIN WILLIAMS

  In March of 2004, David Simon and Ed Burns – the former reporter and the ex-cop whose adventures with bureaucracy and bad guys pumped stranger-than-fiction blood into The Wire – sat down with one of the legendary kingpins in the annals of Baltimore narcotics, Melvin D. “Little Melvin” Williams.

  Williams, then 63, had spent more than a third of his life in prison when he met with Simon, Burns, and a tape recorder at The Wire offices on South Clinton Street along the southeast Baltimore waterfront.

  He was less than a year out of prison – and a year away from making his debut as “The Deacon” on The Wire – after a federal judge had reduced a 22-year sentence on a 2000 handgun charge because it did not meet certain technicalities.

  Simon, who in 1987 chronicled Melvin’s criminal career in a five-part series in the Baltimore Sun, described the meeting as one of the more “wonderfully bizarre” moments of his career.

  As a city homicide detective, Burns had a lead role in the 1984 federal wiretap case that had resulted in Williams�
� spending 16 years in federal prisons. For his part, Simon cemented his reputation as a crime reporter at the Baltimore Sun with the aforementioned series.

  When the trio got together for the first time, taking lunch several months earlier, Williams passed out a business card with his phone number on it.

  “What I wouldn’t have given to have had that more than 20 years ago,” quipped Burns, who had spent hundreds of hours on dialed-number recorders and wiretaps before discerning exactly which phones were being used by Williams.

  The 2004 meeting – taking place between Seasons Two and Three of the show – only occurred because of the mutual respect the unlikely trio have for one another.

  Burns, the career cop, who played fair; Simon, the reporter who looked past the immediate details of the crime scenes for motivations more subtle than greed; and Williams, a survivor of a lifetime in the big leagues of organized crime, a man who prides himself on an unblemished reputation for loyalty and discretion.

  “I wouldn’t be in this room if Ed had shit in his blood,” Williams said of the cop who locked him up. “He was as sincere about what he was as I was about what I was.”

  The Baltimore saga of Little Melvin goes back to the late 1950s, when, at the tender age of 14, Williams was being pulled out of Pennsylvania Avenue pool halls by the cops with hundreds of dollars in his pocket.

  He learned to shoot dice – and, more importantly, to cheat at dice – before leaving grade school. By the time he entered Frederick Douglass High School, Williams was regarded as one of the best pool players in the city, if not the East Coast.

  As a sharp young man on his way up in the world of 1950s gambling – he is fabled among a certain generation for hitting the three-digit number twice in a row on $100 bets – Melvin eventually became a protégé of Julius “the Lord” Salsbury.