Beadie Russell quotes from The Wire

Beadie

World keeps turning.

Beadie

All the guys at the bar, Jimmy, all the girls; they don't show up at your wake. Not because they don't like you. But because, they never knew your last name. Then a month later, someone tells them, "Oh, Jimmy died." "Jimmy who?" "Jimmy the Cop." "Ohhh," they say, "him". And all the people on the job, all those people you spent all the hours in the radio cars with, the guys with their feet up on the desk, tellin' stories, who shorted you on your food runs, who signed your overtime slips. In the end, they're not gonna be there either. Family, that's it. Family, and if you're lucky, one or two friends who are the same as family. That's all the best of us get. Everything else is just...

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 motherfucker, 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? Fuck 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?