The-wire

Dukie ran. He didn't look back. He knew that if he had been forty dollars short on a Tuesday, he'd be dead. It was Wednesday. Chris Partlow only killed on Sundays. That was the only reason Dukie was alive—the bureaucratic ritual of murder. Mackey couldn't get the warrant. Judge Phelan, a whiskey-faced relic who owed favors to half the city, denied it on a technicality: lack of probable cause.

He stood in an alley, heart hammering, as Chris Partlow emerged from the shadows. No entourage. Just him. the-wire

He looked back at the pit. Dukie was sitting on an overturned milk crate, counting crumpled bills. The boy was afraid. Mackey could see it in his shoulders. Dukie ran

Mackey knew different. June Bug wasn't a drug slaying or a robbery gone wrong. June Bug was a CI—a confidential informant—who had been feeding Mackey low-level dirt on a West Baltimore crew run by a ghost named Marlo Stanfield. Two weeks ago, June Bug stopped calling. Three days later, they found him in a leaky rowhouse on Fulton Avenue, a bullet behind his ear, execution style. It was Wednesday