The Wire, Season 2

Rawls:
Sergeant! Your floater's come back. County boards are puttin' her on our side of the bridge.

Landsman:
No f***in' way.

Rawls:
Yeah, some useless f*** in our marine unit faxed 'em a report on the early morning tides and wind currents. Shows the body went into the water west of the bridge and drifted out.

Landsman:
McNulty.

Rawls:
[laughs] F***in' Jimmy. F***in' with us for the fun of it. I gotta give the son of a bitch some credit for wit on this one. [laughs] Cocksucker.

Landsman:
Motherf***er.

Herc:
How about you come on the raids tomorrow? Take a few doors for ol' time sake.

Kima:
You takin' doors?

Herc:
Yeah. Two houses an' a bar on Kane Street. C'mon Kima, mount up wit' us. I know you miss it.

Kima:
I'm done rollin' around the gutter. I am inside now.

Herc:
Oh, you're a house cat now, huh?

Kima:
I made a promise.

Herc:
I gotta say Kima, if you were a guy, and actually in some ways you're better than most of the guys I know. But if you were a guy, friends would buy you a beer and let you know.

Kima:
Let me know what?

Herc:
You're f***in' whipped.

Kima:
Whipped?

Herc:
Pussy whipped within an inch of your life. I kid you not.

Horseface:
Damn, Frank.

Union Member:
We just sat here and watched Nat Coxson take a shit all over you.

Horseface:
And the shrivelled dick motherf***er that you are, you take it.

Sobotka:
For your information, I wake up every morning with an angry blue vein diamond cutter. I was gonna enlighten the President of the local 47 on this particular point, and he chose to depart. Blue steel gentlemen. Three and a half inches of hard blue steel.

Shamrock:
We done gone so far from Baltimore, we're losing the station. Yo', try a Philly station or some shit like that.

Bodie:
The radio in Philly is different?

Shamrock:
Nigga, please. You gotta be f***ing with me, right? You ain't never heard a station outside of Baltimore?

Bodie:
Yo' man, I ain't never left Baltimore except that Boys Village shit one day, and I wasn't tryin' to hear no radio up in that bitch.

Landsman:
It's all about self-preservation, Jimmy. Something you never learned.

[Bunk and McNulty secretly eating crabs in the interrogation room]

Bunk:
You got these off the boat?

McNulty:
What, in winter? In a couple of months... fringe benefit. Can't catch crabs in homicide, right?

Bunk:
Uh-uh... except maybe the occasional emergency room nurse every now and then.

Sobotka:
Why the f*** didn't you tell me what was in that motherf***ing can?

Spiros:
Now you wanna know what's in the cans? Before you wanted to know nothing. Now you ask. Guns, OK? Drugs, whore, vodka, BMWs. Beluga caviar, or bombs, maybe? Bad terrorists with big nuclear bombs. I'm kidding you, Frank, it's a joke. But you don't ask ... because you don't wanna know.

Bunk:
Jimmy, the look on Jay Landsman's face, he nearly cried!

[McNulty, Freamon and Bunk all laugh]

Lester:
And Rawls! I swear to God the man stayed in his office all day! All afternoon, he just stays in his office with the door closed.

McNulty:
Careful, you're giving me an erection!

McNulty:
F*** it, they chew you up, they gotta spit you back out.

Lester:
[to "Non-English" speaking crewman] You cannot travel halfway around the world and not speak any motherf***in' English.

Country:
Yo, uh, String, why are you so down on the phone companies, man?

Stringer:
While back, I took a stroll through the pit, I saw that kid we got running things down there, uh, Poot. Now, he got the cell phone I gave him for the business, right there on his hip. But, the nigga got another cell phone that only rang when the pussy called. Now, if this no-count nigga got two cell phones, how the f*** you gonna sell any more of them motherf***ers? That's market saturation.

Landsman:
There is some charm to a woman in uniform. But the fact remains we work plain clothes in Homicide. Not to say that the clothes need be plain. For you, l would suggest some pantsuits muted in colour. Something to offset Detective Moreland's pinstriped, lawyerly affectations and the brash, tweedy impertinence of Detective Freamon.

Omar:
Look, Dante, what's it gonna take for you to be convinced, man? I don't bed no babies. [pauses] Huh?

Dante:
What you think?

[Omar and Dante start making out]

Dante:
You gonna have to do better than that.

Omar:
Oh, indeed.

McNulty:
You see the preliminary? Positives for oral, vaginal, anal. No IDs, no passports, no visas, no real money - and the girls are coming across the water like that.

Bunk:
Yeah.

Lester:
McNulty has a theory...

Bunk:
Does he now?

Lester:
You deductive motherf***er, you.

Bunk:
So he's gonna wander in here with some johnny-come-lately bullshit about how all these girls must be coming over here as prostitutes. Talking about how if they ain't got the cash to travel better than a container ship, then they sure as shit don't got the money to pay a plastic surgeon.

Lester:
Then he's gonna go past that. And say something about that one found dead in the water - being tossed off the ship after she's already dead from a beat-down?

Bunk:
But why did she get beat? He's gonna ask us that like we don't know.

Lester:
Then he's gonna answer his own question, and say her swabs are negative, right? F*** or fight with all them sailor boys - and she fought.

Bunk:
So, it got a little rough, she got banged around, she comes up dead. And then, somebody panics and tosses her in the harbour overnight before the ship ties up.

Beadie:
But the other girls saw.

Bunk:
So now the other girls, they get told to get back in that can. And our man, to cover this shit up, he gets up on top and bangs down the airpipe. [stands up, sighs dramatically] Anything else you wanna tell us?

Rawls:
Do you even know what this detail's about Lieutenant?

Daniels:
Some kinda beef that Valchek has.

Rawls:
Two f***in' Polacks pissin' on each other's leg.

Prison Warden:
Hell, if you can't win the war on drugs in a prison, where the hell you gonna win it?

Stringer:
Yo', Rock.

Shamrock:
Huh?

Stringer:
Be subtle with it, man. You know what subtle means?

Shamrock:
Laid back and shit.

Daniels:
Where are the detectives who were first assigned?

Valchek:
Dead. To me, anyway. I shipped them humps back to Burrell as fast as I could.

Kima:
[to Daniels, about joining the new detail] I'll tell your wife if you tell mine.

McNulty:
[about Omar] He play you hard?

Bubbles:
I go at him respectable. He put that goddamn shotgun in my face, man. I'm looking at two goddamn tubes of the Harbor Tunnel staring right at me. [McNulty laughs] Each one about yea-big. I damn near piss my pants.

Lester:
Colonel, respectfully, did you just f*** me over without giving me half a chance to clear this case?

Rawls:
Let's be clear, Detective Freamon. When I f*** you over, you'll know it. You'll be so goddamn certain, you won't need to ask the question.

Kima:
Cool Lester Smooth... hey, what's happenin'?

Lester:
Same f***-ups in the same shit detail, workin' out of the same shithouse kind of office. You people lack for personal growth, you know that?

[after the Stevedores' Union members testified in front of the Grand Jury]

Bunk:
How'd we do, Charlie?

Charlie:
I almost got one to swear that the docks are actually near the water.

Sobotka:
What do you say, Johnny? What do you say to any question?

Johnny Fifty:
I take the Fifth Commandment.

D'Angelo Barksdale:
The past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it; all this shit matters. Like at the end of the book, ya' know, boats and tides and all. It's like you can change up, right, you can say you're somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are and what happened before is what really happened. It don't matter that some fool say he different 'cause the things that make you different is what you really do, what you really go through. Like, ya' know, all those books in his library. He frontin' with all them books, but if you pull one down off the shelf, none of the pages have ever been opened. He got all them books, and he hasn't read nearly one of them. Gatsby, he was who he was, and he did what he did. And 'cause he wasn't willing to get real with the story, that shit caught up to him.

[At Bird's trial]

Ilene:
And what is your occupation?

Omar:
Occupation?

Ilene:
What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Little?

Omar:
I rip and run.

Ilene:
You...

Omar:
I robs drug dealers.

Ilene:
And exactly how long has this been your occupation, Mr. Little?

Omar:
Well, I don't know exactly. I venture to say maybe 'bout eight or nine years.

Ilene:
Mr. Little, how does a man rob drug dealers for eight or nine years and live to tell about it?

Omar:
Day at a time, I suppose.

Levy:
You are amoral, are you not? You are feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. You're stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city. You are a parasite who leeches off--

Omar:
Just like you, man.

Levy:
--the culture of drugs... Excuse me, what?

Omar:
I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It's all in the game, though, right?

Omar:
That wasn't no attempted murder.

Levy:
Then what was it, Mr. Little?

Omar:
I shot the boy Mike-Mike in his hind parts, that all. [jury members laugh] Fixed it up so he couldn't sit right. [Judge Phelan chuckles]

Levy:
Why'd you shoot Mike-Mike in his, um... hind parts, Mr. Little?

Omar:
Let's say we had a disagreement.

Levy:
A disagreement over?

Omar:
Well, you see, Mike-Mike thought he should keep that cocaine he was slingin' and the money he was makin' from slingin' it. I thought otherwise.

Sergei:
Family cannot be helped.

Proposition Joe:
Who you tellin'? I got motherf***in' nephews and in-laws f***ing all my shit up all the time and it ain't like I can pop a cap in their ass and not hear about it Thanksgivin' time. For real, I'm livin' life with some burdensome n*ggers.

...

Nick:
Thanks for bein' straight on this.

Proposition Joe:
Fool, if it wasn't for Sergei here, you and your cuz' both would be cadaverous motherf***ers.

D.C. Guy:
[about D'Angelo's death] But did your man Avon even knew about it? [Stringer shakes his head] You on your own here huh?

Stringer:
You right, it ain't none of your business. And if I were you, I wouldn't let a word of this mess end up in Avon's ear.

D.C. Guy:
Baltimore niggas off the hook, I swear. All ya'll.

Prez:
What if they're not sneaking anything off this time? What then?

Lester:
Ah then, tragically, you will have wasted yet another day in a life you've already misspent in the service of the City of Baltimore.

Carver:
[about Herc, modeling sunglasses] His name is Head. Dick Head.

Bunk:
The thing of it is, Lieutenant... Jimmy McNulty, when he ain't policing he's a picture postcard of a drunken, self-destructive f***-up. And when he is policing... he's pretty much the same motherf***er. But on a good case, he runnin' in front of the pack. That's as close as the man comes to bein' right.

Daniels:
[about McNulty] You ever see how a dog gets when he smells a bone buried in the yard?

Rawls:
Yeah, and I seen one take a shit on my carpet, too. And don't give me that he's-got-that-fire-in-the-belly garbage, either. The answer is no.

Rhonda:
[reading an affadavit] You all cannot spell for shit.

Bunk:
Well, would we be police if we could?

Horseface:
[to Frank, while looking at a porn mag] Let me ask you something important. You like fake tits? I can't decide. Thus far, I'm undecided on fake tits.

[Bunk comes into detail room wearing lacrosse sweats]

Herc:
Lacrosse?

Bunk:
What, a brother can't run with a stick? Jim Brown was an All-American midfielder at Syracuse.

Lester:
You putting yourself beside Jim Brown?

Bunk:
Lester, um, I'm, I'm just saying...

Daniels:
I thought you were born in pinstripes!

Bunk:
Lieutenant, I was under the impression that, uh, when detailed against his will to some backwards-ass, no-count, out-in-the-district, lost ball/tall-grass drug investigation, a veteran police of means and talent can wear whatever the f*** he damn well pleases.

Stringer:
[to Bodie] This here game is more than the rep you carry, the corner you hold. You gotta be fierce, I know that, but more than that, you gotta show some flex, give and take on both sides.

Proposition Joe:
[about Brother Mouzone] You don't think I'm gonna send any of my people up against Brother? Shit, That nigga got more bodies on him than a Chinese cemetery.

Valchek:
Now the votes are in, and you're movin' your damn golf trophies upstairs to the Commissioner's office, now you're freezin' me out, huh? F***in' rat-f***er's, all of ya'. This is my case, mine! And now you're gonna tell me who the target is? Well not f***in' likely.

[during extended surveillance detail, Herc takes a picture of Carver]

Carver:
Hey, don't waste film.

Herc:
We've been here so f***ing long that you're startin' to look good to me.

McNulty [about the two hookers in the sting operation] There were two of them. I was outnumbered.

Brother Mouzone:
Lamar, where's my Harper's?

Lamar:
Say wha'?

Brother Mouzone:
Harper's. The new issue.

Lamar:
You didn't say that one. You said The New Republic, and Atlantic, and a new somethin' else.

Brother Mouzone:
I did not forget to tell you Harper's. Every week I tell you the same shit, and every week you forget half of what I say.

Stringer:
You see these east-side motherf***er's over here? I want'chu to extend to these motherf***er's all the hospitality west Baltimore is famous for.

Bodie:
Yeah, you want us to f*** 'em up.

Cheese:
You mean to tell me there's a west-side nigga that know how to sell shit without stickin' a pistol in a fiends face?

Bodie:
Yeah dog, and you better get used it, 'cause ya'll ain't sellin shit, until we bone-ass dry!

Brother Mouzone:
[to Cheese, after shooting him] Pellets in plastic. Rat shot. What you need to be concerned about is what's seated in the chamber now: a copper-jacketed, hollow point 120-grain hot street load of my own creation. So you need to think for just a moment and ask yourself: what do I have to do before this man raise up his gun again?

Ziggy:
It pays to go with the union card every time.

Amanda Reese:
Name names, and come clean. You help yourself, and your union.

Sobotka:
Help my union? For 25 years we've been dyin' slow down there. Dry dock's rustin', piers standin' empty. My friends and their kids like we got the cancer. No life-line got thrown all that time, nothin' from nobody, and now you wanna help us? Help me?

Spiros:
[about Nick Sobotka] You don't have to worry about Nicko...

The Greek:
You are fond of him Spiros. You should have had a son.

Spiros:
But then I would have had a wife.

Bunk:
A different look for our boy.

McNulty:
Yeah, Perry Ellis, or something.

Bunk:
Now, how would a just-rolled-out-of-bed-looking motherf***er like you, know the designer?

McNulty:
[pauses] Okay, I'm guessing.

Bunk:
It's a Joseph Abboud. He puts dark buttons instead of brass on his blazers. That's the Abboud signature.

McNulty:
You know what they call a guy who pays that much attention to his clothes, don't you?

Bunk:
Mm-hmm, a grown-up.

Sobotka:
You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.

Bunk:
Boy, them Greeks and those twisted-ass names.

McNulty:
Man, back off the Greeks. They invented civilization.

Bunk:
Yeah? Ass-f***ing, too.

Daniels:
[to Major Valchek] I'll tell you the truth Major. Everyone who saw the punch wrote on it. And they've all got Prez throwing the punch, no question. They've also got you addressing a subordinate officer as uh, what was it? A shit-bird?

Valchek:
F*** you. This is the Baltimore Police Department, not the Roland Park Ladies Tea.

Nick:
Seniority sucks.

La La:
If you ain't a senior.

Spiros:
He knows my name, but my name is not my name. And you... to them you're only "The Greek."

The Greek:
And, of course, I'm not even Greek.

Beadie:
World keeps turning.

Herc:
Fucking white boys, I love 'em. I fucking love 'em.

Kima:
Yeah?

Herc:
Dumb as a box of rocks.

Kima:
Who?

Herc:
White boys. Talking about the brain-deads in my Kane Street case. I call him up, I tell him I wanna buy some drugs. You know what he says? Says "Okay, I'll sell you the drugs. How much drugs do you want?" I swear to God, Kima, they don't code it, they don't ask for a meet, nothin'. And then when you make the deal, there's no runner, no bullshit. It's the guy himself walking up to you in the parking lot, saying: "I brought the drugs. Did you bring the money?" [Kima chuckles] I'm not kidding. I have much respect for black people after working with these idiots for two weeks. Seriously, white boys wanna sell drugs in Baltimore, they'll have to make different laws for it. Like even it out for them.

Kima:
Affirmative action.

Herc:
Leave no white man behind.

[Ziggy is trying to get White Mike to front him a package.]

Ziggy:
Mike, I thought we was friends.

White Mike:
Did you fuck up the last two packages?

Ziggy:
...sorta.

White Mike:
And are you beat to shit?

Ziggy:
No?

White Mike:
Take a walk, my friend.

Bunk:
It’s you Lester, it’s gotta be you.

Lester:
Me, huh?

Bunk:
We need to bring in the Lieutenant, his detail and all of the manpower and toys that go with it. Daniels listens when you talk. You got the smell of wisdom on you brother. Now look, we all got roles to play.

Lester:
What’s your role?

Bunk:
I’m just a humble motherfucker with a big ass dick.

Lester:
You give yourself too much credit

Bunk:
OK then, I ain’t all that humble.

Stringer:
[after a botched attempt to dispose guns in Baltimore harbor fails] It ain't enough I gotta be the one thinking this whole shit through. But I gotta be the one looking out for this shit and checking on this, making sure this shit is done. No, that's not enough. That's why they pay CEOs so much money; cause when shit go bad, it fall of them. Everybody else can be ducking and hiding, doing what they fucking wanna do. And when push come to shove, I'm the one that's gotta take the responsibility, and y'all are leaving me very little to work with right now!

Shamrock:
Hold up, String-

Stringer:
No, that's a very simple thing, my nigga. You drive the guns to the water. You look around, you ain't see anybody, you throw the guns. In the water. Splash.

Cole:
Nobody ever thinks they're stupid; it's part of their stupidity.

The Greek:
[To Spiros] Your way, it won't work.

Clerk:
Business or pleasure for you?

The Greek:
Business. Always business.

Bunk:
I bet you there's a fucking police detective somewheres else looking at a table full of heads right now.