Chapter Text
As Tony Soprano took his regular seat in his therapist’s office, his head was still spinning.
“Are you all right today, Anthony?” Dr. Jennifer Melfi asked as she smoothed her skirt and sat down across from him.
“Huh?”
“I asked if you were okay.” She leaned forward, looking at him with growing concern. “You seem a little...dazed. Are you feeling unwell?”
Tony shook his head quickly, both as an answer to her question and to bring himself back down to earth.
“Nah, I’m fine.”
Dr. Melfi leaned back once more, but she still looked concerned. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Just a little dazed, like you said.”
“And why is that?”
Tony sighed heavily, wondering where to even begin.
“I had a bit of a...strange week last week,” he said at last.
“Strange in a good way or a bad way?”
“Strange in a strange way. Strange by my standards, strange by your standards, strange by anyone’s standards.”
Melfi adjusted her glasses as if to better perceive whatever tale he was about to unfold for her.
“Well,” she said, “can you tell me what happened?”
Tony smiled a tiny bit. Though they couldn’t talk about it openly, his therapist knew full well that he was not in fact a “waste management consultant,” as he claimed during their first session, but one of the highest-ranking members of the North Jersey Mafia. She probably assumed that some kind of extraordinary mob business had gone down last week, and that Tony’s challenge was to tell the story without saying anything that would obligate her to contact the police. In reality, there was very little crime involved in the story, at least on his part, anyway. He wasn’t trying to figure out how to lie; he was trying to figure out how to tell the truth.
Tony cleared his throat, and Melfi sat up straighter.
“I guess I should just start at the beginning,” he said.
It had all started Tuesday evening at the Bada Bing.
Tony had been relaxing at the bar, mesmerized by the undulations of the club’s newest hire. The ringing of the phone didn’t distract him, and he didn’t notice Georgie the bartender timidly calling his name until a hand waving in front of his face snapped him out of his trance.
“You alive in there, T?” his nephew Christopher asked.
“Yeah.” Tony took a sip of his drink. “Why?”
Christopher pointed to Georgie, who was holding out the receiver the way one might hold out a scrap of food for a temperamental wolf. Tony had given Georgie good reason for such caution in the past, but he wasn’t in that kind of mood today.
“Who is it?” he asked as he approached Georgie, Christopher trailing behind him.
“Dunno. He won’t say. He just said he had to talk to you.”
Tony frowned and took the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“Am I speaking with Tony Soprano?”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
“I represent some people in New York who want to see you.”
“Oh, really?” Tony couldn’t help sounding sarcastic. There was something about this guy’s voice that grated on him. He sounded like the sort of guy Dr. Cusamano would be friends with. “Who? What do they want?”
“I’m afraid that’s too sensitive to discuss on the phone. An in-person meeting will be necessary. It’s in your best interest to be there.”
Tony was getting annoyed. “What do you know about my best interests? Who the fuck are you, anyway? What’s your name?”
“Don’t worry about that. Frank Sinatra Drive. You know where that is?”
“Uh. Hoboken, I think?”
“That’s right. Right on the Hudson. And named after an Italian-American icon, which should make you happy. At the northern end of Frank Sinatra Drive, there’s a nice little park. This Friday. Three o’clock. Bring some of your friends. Moltisanti, Dante, Gualtieri at the very least. Be there, and you won’t regret it. Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Soprano. Have you ever heard of a little outfit in Baltimore called the Barksdale Organization?”
“Barks-what? No, I haven’t heard of that. What the fuck is that?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll see soon enough. You know, if Friday’s meeting goes well, there could be even more opportunities on the horizon. It’s a brave new world out there. Sky-blue methamphetamine, for instance—ever heard of that? But I’m getting ahead of myself. One thing at a time. Hoboken, Friday, three o’clock.”
Before Tony could even decide what question to ask next, the line went silent.
“Well?” Christopher said. “What was that all about?”
Tony just shook his head in bemusement. “Back room. Now. Let’s go.”
“I’m telling ya, Ton’, it’s the feds,” said Paulie, his eyes wide with alarm. “You go where they told you, you go away for twenty to life.”
“Oh, will you listen to yourself, Paulie? They gonna arrest me for taking a fucking phone call at my own workplace? Or for going to a public park with my friends?”
“He could be onto something, though,” Christopher said. “They might not be arresting you. Maybe they’re gonna ask you to snitch.”
Silvio turned his iciest glare on Christopher. “Is that what you think of your uncle here, Chrissy? That’s the impression you think he gives?”
“Yeah, Chrissy, what am I, a rat waiting to burst out of its shell?” Tony remembered a split second too late that rats don’t have shells, but everyone present was either too preoccupied to notice or too respectful to speak up.
“Some ‘people in New York,’ though,” Silvio mused, turning back to Tony. “I know what that sounds like to me.”
“Exactly.” Tony exchanged a knowing look with his consigliere. “If there’s any adversary we should expect to find there, it’s not the feds.”
Christopher started to catch on. “The Lupertazzis?”
“If we’re lucky. But I doubt it’s them, ’cause we’re already in business with them. More likely, another of the New York families.”
Paulie shook his head. “A freaky phone call from someone who doesn’t even give his name? Where’s the honor in that? That’s not how this thing of ours operates.”
“Fair point,” Tony said, “but he mentioned the three of you by name. How many people would know that? Look, it’s a public place in broad daylight. I’d rather risk going than not going. Tell you what, though, first chance I get, I’m talking to Johnny Sack, see if he can offer a little New York perspective.”
“We’re doing this, then?” Christopher said.
“I guess so.” Tony shrugged. “I got nothing going on Friday afternoon.”
The most daunting item on Tony’s to-do list was to tell Carmela.
“Tony, I don’t like the sound of this,” she said in a hushed voice.
“Oh, come on, it’s nothing,” Tony said with disdain. “What are you so worried about? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Carmela pretended to think hard. “How about the father of my children getting taken out by a sniper at the top of the Empire State Building?”
“Hey, if someone wanted to snipe me, they could do it right here in North Caldwell.”
Carmela raised her voice: “How about you getting lured into a trap by the FBI and going to prison for God knows how many years? Twenty, maybe? Do you want that, Tony?”
He raised his voice even louder. “No, no, of course I don’t.” Twenty years in the can sounded awful, really. He couldn’t even imagine what that experience would entail. Returning to a normal volume, he said, “Easy solution, though: I just won’t do anything illegal. Uh, just like how I don’t do anything illegal every day,” he added, in case the FBI had bugged his bedroom.
Carmela folded her arms and glared at him, but he didn’t care.
After that, as promised, Tony called up Johnny Sacrimoni, his closest associate from the Lupertazzi family. They met Wednesday morning outside Satriale’s.
“I don’t have much time, Tony,” Johnny said. “I’ve got a busy day today. First, I need to arrange a hit on a guy who insulted Carmine. Then I need to go to the craft store to get some posterboard and paint so that I can make a sign to hold up at church this Sunday when Ginny’s performing her solo. After that, I have to investigate whether one of my capos is a rat, and if he is, I’ve got to arrange a hit on him, too.”
“I’ll keep it short and sweet, then.”
Tony explained what had happened at the Bing last night.
“I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do.” Johnny’s voice was tense. “But it’s setting off alarms, I know that much. Is one of the other New York families trying to come between my family and yours? Do I need to arrange another hit? Because I can definitely do that.”
“No, that’s okay,” Tony said quickly. “No need for any whacking just yet, all right? First, let me go to the meeting and see what I find out, and then we’ll go from there.”
Johnny nodded and looked at his watch. “I’d better get going. I’ll see you around.”
Tony waved goodbye to Johnny. Then he closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a while, trying to work up the courage he would need in Hoboken.
“So, you went to the appointed place?” Melfi said.
“Along with a few of my most trusted employees, yeah,” Tony replied.
“Wow.” She appeared to be bracing herself. “I imagine that would have been nerve-wracking. But clearly you got out of it in one piece. What did you find when you got there?”
“Turned out we weren’t the only ones who got an invitation.”
Melfi raised her eyebrows. “Really?” She was no longer bracing herself. She was trying to play it cool, but it was obvious that she was excited about this twist. “Who else was there?”
Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he considered how to go about answering that question.
“Well...okay, stick with me here. We’re gonna have to jump around the map a little bit.”
While Tony and Johnny were solemnly pondering the mystery of the phone call, the Baltimore Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit was buzzing with excitement.
Thanks to a resourceful confidential informant, a shrewd Assistant State’s Attorney, an obliging judge, and a whole lot of good old-fashioned detective work, they could finally listen in on the phone conversations of the Barksdale Organization. This was great news for all of them, but none was more gleeful than Detective Jimmy McNulty. Stringer Bell was at last within his reach, so close McNulty could smell the piney cologne that he was convinced Bell wore even though he’d met him multiple times and never caught a whiff of anything, and he was practically salivating. They still hadn’t managed to match a phone number to Stringer himself, but surely it was just a matter of time.
The computer labeled “BODIE” sang that beautiful song that was actually kind of grating on one’s ears, but it meant that one of the Barksdale lieutenants, Preston “Bodie” Broadus, was receiving a call, which was what made it beautiful. The MCU (that’s the Major Crimes Unit, in this context) huddled around the computer as the incoming call number popped up, digit by digit, on the screen: Two. One. Two.
McNulty’s upper lip curled. “Two-one-two?” he read. “That’s not a West Side area code. That’s not even a Baltimore area code.”
Lester Freamon looked up from the miniature couch he was whittling and frowned at the computer over the rims of his glasses. “That’s New York City. Manhattan, to be precise. Hmm, that’s odd. Where are the rest of the digits?” The display was stuck on two-one-two. Where the remaining digits should have appeared, there was only static.
“Must be the suppliers calling,” McNulty said, trying to sound nonchalant, though secretly he was hoping this was Stringer hiding behind a New York area code.
“Um,” Bodie’s voice said. “Hello?”
“Mr. Broadus?” said an unfamiliar male voice.
“Yeah?”
McNulty exchanged a look of disbelief with Kima Greggs, who had come to stand beside him. These guys were resolute about never using names when talking on their burner phones. Clearly, this call had caught Bodie off guard.
“You work with Russell,” the strange man said.
“Russell? No, I don’t know who that is.”
Bodie had given the smart answer this time, whether because he had his wits about him once more or because he just didn’t know Stringer’s real name. All the detectives nodded approvingly in spite of themselves. Sometimes when you spy on someone long enough, you can’t help but develop affection for them. McNulty knew that all too well. It was certainly true of himself and Stringer.
“It’s kind of like that transference thing you told me about,” Tony said.
“I don’t think it is,” Melfi said.
“Yes, you do,” the mysterious man said. “Russell is a very interesting man.” (McNulty nodded enthusiastically.) “You know a lot of interesting people, actually. So I thought I’d, well, get in touch.”
“Get in touch?” Bodie said incredulously. “For real? You must be new around here.”
“Oh, I’m not ‘around here’ at all, actually. But I don’t let a little thing like that stop me when I put my mind to something.”
“Listen, motherfucker,” Bodie hissed, “if you don’t explain yourself right now—”
“Relax,” the guy said, sparing Bodie from having to come up with a credible threat. “I’m not going to cause any trouble for you. I know this is strange. But this Friday at three o’clock, on the wrong side of freedom’s flood, all will become clear. Crystal clear, one might say. A smart guy—a wise guy—would want to be present. Pass this message along to Russell, would you? Oh—wait a minute!” He chuckled. “Silly me. I got confused. Russell already knows! He’s already in on the plan. My mistake, Mr. Broadus. My mistake...wait, what does that sign say? There’s a sign across the street I can’t quite read. Jam cures trim ion? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Good day, Mr. Broadus.”
“Man, what the fuck—” Bodie said, then the line went dead.
As Freamon marked the call as pertinent, a voice from behind the detectives said, “What the fuck, indeed.”
McNulty turned to see Lieutenant Daniels staring at the screen in bemusement. At his side was ASA Pearlman, who didn’t have a good reason to be at the MCU. She and Daniels had been in his office doing some things they should definitely not have been doing on the clock, but given the exhilaration of infiltrating pre-wiretapped burner phones into the most formidable gang in Baltimore, can you really blame them for needing to let off a little steam?
“Are you sure that’s pertinent, Lester?” Pearlman said. “It sounded like a lot of nonsense to me.”
“Russell is Stringer Bell’s real name,” McNulty pointed out, even though she had explicitly not addressed the question to him.
Observing the general air of confusion in the room, Pearlman said, “So, I take it that wasn’t just some kind of street lingo?”
“Definitely not,” Kima said. “Not that we’ve ever heard before, anyway. I mean, who could that guy possibly be? God, I can’t believe this piece of junk chose that moment to stop working.” She curled her hand into a fist as if to punch the computer, though she stopped herself.
Silence fell as they contemplated the strange call.
Kima squinted up at the ceiling. “‘Jam cures trim ion’? Did I hear that right?”
“That’s what I heard,” Caroline Massey confirmed. “What it means, I couldn’t begin to guess.”
Freamon gestured to the pen register. “From the sound of it, neither could Bodie.”
Kima pressed her hands to her temples. “Well, what’s the point of a code if the other person can’t understand it? And what was all that about the flood of freedom or whatever?”
Freamon reached for an index card and a pen. “Well, I don’t know about that part, but something just occurred to me...” He trailed off as he wrote the nonsensical message on the card: JAM CURES TRIM ION. He held it up for everyone to see.
“Oh!” McNulty snapped his fingers. “Is that...an anagram?”
Daniels sighed. “If only Prez was here. He’d figure it out in a heartbeat.” Unfortunately, the unit’s star codebreaker was currently suspended, pending investigation by internal affairs.
McNulty pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll text him.” He quickly typed the anagram into a text message and sent it. Within seconds, Prez responded:
:( Major Crimes Unit :(
The sad faces indicated that Prez was sad while typing this message. He had good reason to be sad, but we won’t get into that here because this is a lighthearted story.
“Cedric,” Pearlman said anxiously, touching her fingertips to her lips, “does this mean what I think it means?”
Daniels’s shoulders had gone stiff. “The message wasn’t for Bodie, or for Bell. It was for us. Someone must know we’re listening.” He glared at McNulty. “Is this your doing?”
“What? Come on, you think I told someone in New York what we’re up to here?” McNulty was sure once he said it out loud, Daniels would hear how ridiculous it sounded. But Daniels’ face didn’t change at all, so apparently he would not put it past McNulty to do just that.
Kima held up her hand. “Um, okay, we’ve got the anagram down, but can we get back to the rest of what he said? The part about where he wants us to go?”
“‘The wrong side of freedom’s flood,’” Freamon recited. “Must be some other kind of code.”
Silence fell again as they contemplated this rather tortured phrase.
“Well, Manhattan area code, right?” Kima said. “Maybe ‘freedom’ is Lady Liberty, and the ‘flood’ is the Hudson. He’s summoning us to where he already is.”
“We’re going to New York!” McNulty yelled.
“The wrong side of freedom’s flood,” Freamon reminded him.
“We’re going to New Jersey!” McNulty yelled.
“That kinda pissed me off, to tell you the truth,” Tony said. “I mean, who the fuck are a bunch of nobodies from Baltimore to tell us we’re on the wrong side of anything?”
“I see this has stirred up some strong feelings in you.”
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re just getting started.”
Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, Walter White was, as usual, feeling pretty grumpy. So was Jesse Pinkman.
Walt had gotten out of the drug game, but Jesse wanted to get back in. So Jesse had started cooking on his own, using the formula he’d learned from Walt. That infuriated Walt, which infuriated Jesse. Now Walt was getting back into the game, but he and Jesse were still too angry to even look at each other, let alone work together.
“Can you guys at least say hi to each other?” Walt’s lawyer, Saul Goodman, pleaded weakly.
“No,” Walt and Jesse said simultaneously.
“Okay. I tried my best,” said Saul.
“Why did you call us here, Saul?” Walt said. “This had better be important. Unlike some people, I have actual responsibilities.”
“Hey, bitch, don’t you think I have shit I’d rather be doing, too?” Jesse snapped.
Before Walt could say anything, Saul jumped in.
“Gentlemen, I wasn’t the one who summoned you here. Just listen, and you’ll understand. I couldn’t explain this over the phone. Now, can you be quiet for a minute? Okay? Okay. There’s a voicemail you guys need to hear.”
He pulled out his cell phone, pressed some buttons, and held up the phone for Walt and Jesse to listen to the recording of a man’s unfamiliar voice.
“Hello, Mr. Goodman. I have a message for Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. I know they’re at odds right now, which is why I’m leaving this message with you instead. Mr. White, Mr. Pinkman, I need you to come to Hoboken, New Jersey, this Friday. I recommend you bring Mr. Goodman as well, if he’s available. I’m sure you’ll be leery about this summons. Hopefully you’ll feel differently once you understand what’s been happening in Baltimore. Namely—” And then he said a bunch of chemical stuff, much of which went over Jesse’s head, all of which went over Saul’s head, but Walt knew it was a perfect description of how his meth achieved 99.1% purity.
“You’ll find answers in Hoboken on Friday at 3:00,” the guy continued. “The northern end of Frank Sinatra Drive. Right on the Hudson. You won’t be the only ones there. Believe me, you don’t want to miss this.”
Then the message ended.
“Who was that?” Jesse asked.
Saul shrugged. “I was hoping one of you would know. It’s an NYC area code, but my phone is on the fritz, so I don’t have the rest of the number.” He turned to Walt. “Did that mumbo-jumbo mean anything to you, Einstein?”
Walt really wanted to point out that Einstein was a physicist, not a chemist like himself. Unfortunately, Heisenberg, whose name he used as an alias, was also a physicist, so his pedantry wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Instead, he said, “It means that either someone else is using my process, or someone is taking my product—the meth that I cooked—and reselling it. And on top of that, someone knows who I am. Who Heisenberg is.”
“And who Heisenberg’s lawyer is,” Saul said, tugging nervously at the collar of his shirt.
Walt ignored him. “I have a potential competitor. I have to shut this down.”
“Yeah, but in Baltimore?” said Jesse. “That’s gotta be like a thousand miles from here. Why do we care?”
“Closer to two thousand, actually.”
“Okay, well, that just proves my point. That’s not our market, yo.”
“‘Our’ market?” Walt laughed. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Jesse. Your ‘product’ will be lucky if it travels two miles, let alone two thousand. I’m sure there are a hundred of you in Maryland. But there’s only one of me...or at least, there should be. Yet somehow, my product has ended up on the market in Baltimore.”
He glared at Jesse, who recoiled.
“Yo, what’s your deal? Why are you looking at me like that? You think I had something to do with this? Are you nuts?”
“What do you mean, am I nuts? You’re already using a cheap imitation of my formula. The obvious conclusion is that you’ve passed it along to someone else—and my identity along with it.”
Jesse jumped to his feet. “I don’t even know anyone in Baltimore,” he yelled, ignoring Saul’s feeble “calm down” hand gestures. “If I was gonna branch out, I wouldn’t go all the way to the East Coast. That makes no sense.”
Walt was so impressed that Jesse knew the approximate location of Baltimore, he stopped arguing with him and turned back to Saul.
“I have to investigate this. You’re coming with me, Saul.”
As Walt stood up, Jesse stepped in between him and Saul.
“Hey! That dude on the phone said we’re both supposed to go!” Walt rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t argue. The guy did in fact ask for both of them, and though he wouldn’t let Jesse or Saul know this, he was a little bit afraid of this mysterious, seemingly omniscient man.
“Plus,” Jesse went on, a smug glimmer in his eye, “if you’re still not convinced that I had nothing to do with this, you should probably keep an eye on me.”
“How about we all travel together?” Saul said brightly. “Road trip! Hey, Francesca,” he yelled to his receptionist, “I’m gonna be going out of town for a few days. Any of my clients call, tell ’em I’ll be back by Sunday, Monday at the latest.” Seeing Walt and Jesse glaring at each other, he said, “Uh, I hope you fellows won’t be too offended, but I don’t think I can handle being the only chaperone present. I’m inviting Mike.”
Walt groaned. “All four of us in one car?” He could already feel himself going crazy from claustrophobia.
“We could take the RV,” Jesse suggested, and Walt had to concede that that was a good idea.
Walt did a quick calculation in his brilliant bald head. “If we leave this afternoon and drive in shifts, we should be in Hoboken with time to spare.”
“I’m not driving that tank,” Saul protested.
“Fine. Then Jesse and Mike and I can handle driving, and you can pay for gas. Now go get packed. I’ll meet you back here in three hours. Jesse, bring the RV.”
Walt went to Los Pollos Hermanos and sat anxiously at a table until his new boss, Gus Fring, sat down across from him.
“Mr. White! Always a pleasure to see you. Can I help you?”
“I came to let you know that I’ll be out of town for a couple days,” Walt told him.
“I am somewhat displeased to hear of this, Mr. White,” Gus said, which was very strong language by Gus standards. Lowering his voice, he added, “You had told me you were ready to start cooking again.”
“I was,” Walt insisted. “I am. But something urgent has come up.”
As Walt recounted what had just happened at Saul’s office, Gus remained outwardly calm, but the muscles around his eyes tightened.
“This is...troubling news,” he said when Walt was done. “And you have no thoughts on how this circumstance might have come about?”
Walt shook his head quickly. “I have no idea whatsoever, and neither does Jesse, I swear to you. Look, I just have to go find out what’s happening, then I’ll come back, report my findings to you, and get to work.”
Gus nodded. “All right. I look forward to our partnership when you return.” He gave Walt his best customer service smile, and Walt understood the implied threat that Gus would unleash hell on him if this was some sort of underhanded plot on his part. Fortunately for Walt, if there was any plotting afoot, he wasn’t the one doing it.
“Excellent. Thanks.” Walt rubbed his hands together. “Now I just have to break the news to Skyler.”
“Wow, how tragic for me. I’m so sad that I won’t see you until next week,” Skyler deadpanned.
“Where are you going, Dad?” Walter Junior called from the living room, where he was watching baseball on the TV, his baby sister Holly sleeping in his arms.
“Oh, just spending a little while on the coast,” Walt replied cheerily. “The doctors say it could do me some good. The sea cure, they used to call it.”
Then he turned back to Skyler and spoke as if he hadn’t picked up on her sarcasm: “I’ll miss you. When I get back, we’ll talk about the situation vis-à-vis our marriage, all right?”
“You mean our divorce. The divorce that you already signed the papers for.”
Walt gritted his teeth. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean. Though, you know, if you’re having any second thoughts, this will give you a few days to think it over.”
She said nothing, just raised her eyebrows.
“Why’s everyone leaving town so suddenly?” said Marie, who was on the couch next to Walter Junior. “First Hank jets off on some last-minute mysterious work trip, and now you’re leaving, too? Should I be suspicious?”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Of course not!” said Walt with an enormous grin.
Nailed it, he thought. God, I’m SO good at lying.
“All right,” he said to Skyler, “well, I’ll be on my way, then.”
“All right.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Now, that was something I could relate to,” Tony said with a grin. “She sound like a ball-breaker or what?”
“Ball-breaker?” Melfi repeated, frowning. “I thought you said he was cooking meth behind her back. Why shouldn’t she be unhappy with him? I mean, you’d have to really hate women to think she’s the bad guy here.”
Tony glowered. “You take everything so goddamn seriously, you know that? Anyway. Back to the story. All right, so we got all three cities in the mix now.”
Melfi sighed with relief. “So this is as complicated as the story is going to get?”
“Oh, it’s gonna get plenty more complicated, but it was just those three messages. One for me and my friends, one for the cops, and one for the drug makers. Three messages, three cities. Four, if you count Hoboken separately, but that’s all.”
“But you said the call that the police officers in Baltimore intercepted was from New York, didn’t you? And the lawyer got a call from New York, too?”
Tony scratched his chin. “Yeah. About that...y’know what, I’m just gonna jump back in. We’ll get back to that eventually.”
Daniels wasn’t convinced that the phone call was worth schlepping all the way to New Jersey.
“We don’t know who that man on the phone was, what he wants with us, or if he has any meaningful connection to our targets.”
“Yeah, and we never will know if we don’t go,” McNulty objected.
“Detective McNulty, do I need to remind you that within a week, our targets will ditch these burners, and we’ll be back to square one? It’s a miracle we have this wiretap at all. If we waste this precious time on a wild goose chase in New Jersey, I don’t think even Rhonda will be able to convince Judge Phelan to grant us another one.”
“Yeah, but what if—oh, hang on, I have to take this. Hello?” McNulty answered his cell phone.
“Hi, Jimmy,” said his friend Special Agent Terrance Fitzhugh. “You busy?”
“Uh.” He glanced back at Daniels, who looked like he was considering hauling McNulty to New Jersey himself just to be rid of him. “Sort of?”
“Can you spare the time to visit your pals at the Bureau?” Fitz sounded unusually urgent. Normally it was McNulty asking him for stuff, not the other way around.
“What? Now? Why?”
“We have some guests who are interested in your Barksdale crew. It’s going to be hard to explain over the phone. Best if you just come over here in person.”
Either out of respect for the FBI or because McNulty was just driving him crazy, Daniels let him go. Even though he hadn’t yet won over Daniels about the New Jersey thing, McNulty was in high spirits. He was nearly skipping with excitement as he approached Baltimore’s FBI office.
Fitz was waiting for him in the lobby. He looked uncharacteristically frazzled as he said, “Hey, Jimmy, how’s it going?”
“Uh, I’m fine.” McNulty frowned at him. “You, on the other hand, look like you’ve had a rough day.”
“Not rough, exactly. Just eventful. Come on.”
McNulty followed Fitz through security, down a bunch of hallways, and into a secluded room. There were three strangers in there: a man with a widow’s peak and beautiful eyes, a woman with a serious face and blonde hair, and a stocky bald man with a leering smile.
“Who are they?”
“Well, these—” Fitz indicated the man with the widow’s peak and beautiful eyes and the woman with the serious face and blonde hair— “are my FBI brethren, Dwight Harris and Robyn Sanseverino of the Newark branch. And this—” he indicated the stocky bald man with the leering smile— “is Hank Schrader of the DEA’s Albuquerque office. And this—” he indicated Detective Jimmy McNulty of the Baltimore Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit— “is Detective Jimmy McNulty of the Baltimore Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” McNulty said, shaking hands with the three new feds. “I mean this politely, but why the fuck are you in Baltimore?”
The New Jersey FBI agents looked at Hank, who gestured for them to answer first. But instead of an answer, Agent Harris threw McNulty a question: “Detective McNulty, does the name Anthony Soprano mean anything to you?”
“Nope, can’t say it does. Why? Who’s he?”
Harris looked him straight in the eye. “He’s the underboss of the DiMeo family.”
McNulty blinked. “When you say ‘family,’ do you mean...”
“Cosa Nostra,” Sanseverino said bluntly.
(“A totally baseless accusation,” Tony said when recounting this part of the story. “Sure,” said Dr. Melfi.)
“Oh. Wow. Is he on the run from you guys? Hiding out in Baltimore?” That would be pretty cool, McNulty thought.
“Oh, no,” Harris said. “No, we know exactly where he is. I actually saw him at the pork store just the other day. We chatted a bit.” A faraway look entered his eyes, and he smiled to himself. “We do hope to be able to charge him with something someday, but at the same time...well, we’ve been after him for so long, I have to admit I’ve grown kind of fond of the guy.”
“I know the feeling,” McNulty said passionately, and he and Harris exchanged a look of deep understanding.
“I’m telling you, it’s like that transference thing,” said Tony.
“Again, I don’t think it is,” said Melfi (though deep down, she was starting to see his point).
“Anyway,” Sanseverino cut in, “we have a wiretap on the phone in one of his businesses, and Soprano himself received a strange call there the other day. He didn’t seem to know the caller, and thanks to a very inconvenient malfunction of our equipment, we weren’t able to get the number beyond a New York City area code. The other man wanted to meet with him and some of his associates this Friday in Hoboken. He hung up before Soprano even gave him an answer.”
“Whoa. Okay.” McNulty was almost hyperventilating. “Okay, I got something I really need to tell you guys about. But first, why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with me?”
“There was another thing the caller said,” Harris explained. “He asked Tony—uh, I mean, he asked Soprano if he’d ever heard of the Barksdale Organization.”
McNulty nearly screamed.
“He said no,” Harris continued, “but we assume that’s what the meeting will be about. That is, if Tony shows up. Damn it! I mean if Soprano shows up!”
McNulty looked to Fitz, who was smiling deviously.
“It’s kind of a heartwarming thought, really,” Fitz said. “I mean, imagine it—the Mafia joining forces with our own dear West Side drug dealers! Now, how exactly that would work, I don’t know. But, apparently, whoever was on the other end of the line believes that a mutual interest in organized crime can surmount all sorts of differences.”
“It’s possible that the caller was a representative of one of the New York crime families,” Sanseverino said, “but we haven’t been able to narrow it down any further than that. And that theory may not be correct at all. There’s no precedent for any of this.”
“Wowww,” McNulty breathed. He felt dizzy with delight.
Fitz spoke up again: “But that’s not all. The caller also hinted at a future business opportunity, something involving blue methamphetamine. We reached out to the Baltimore District Office of the DEA to see if that meant anything to them. Turned out that yeah, it did mean something to the DEA. One DEA agent in particular. And, as luck would have it, this particular agent was already in Baltimore, because—well, I’ll let him take the reins. Your turn, Agent Schrader.”
“All riiiiight! Heh heh heh,” laughed Hank. “This is where the story gets good.” This comment clearly peeved Harris and Sanseverino, who thought that their story was perfectly good, thank you very much, but Hank didn’t notice. “So, us DEA folks have been chasing this one kingpin out in ABQ for a while now. That’s Albuquerque, for you East Coasters. Guy calls himself Heisenberg, and he makes the purest crystal meth New Mexico has ever seen. Old Mexico, too, for that matter. We found some of this guy’s signature blue meth in the possession of a deceased drug lord who our colleagues in El Paso tell us had some kind of ties to a cartel based in Juárez. How exactly the cartel fits into the picture, well, there’s still a lot of question marks there. But here’s what we do know: a year ago, your average tweaker in ABQ was getting high off the meth equivalent of a Bic Mac. Then Heisenberg showed up, and now they’re dining on only the finest filet mignon.” He sighed with a cross between a grin and a grimace. A grinace, if you will. “This guy knows his shit, that’s for sure. Don’t tell my bosses I said this, but when we catch him, I kinda want to tell him I admire him.”
“Don’t say it,” said Melfi.
“Let me guess,” McNulty said. “This gourmet meth has turned up in Baltimore.”
Hank shot him with a finger gun. “Bingo. Unless somebody else came up with the same recipe by pure coincidence, but if I thought there was any real chance of that, I wouldn’t have bothered coming all this way. I mean, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy in Albuquerque. I’m this close to tracking down an RV we think Heisenberg works out of, but I put that on hold to come here. Now, as I understand it, your Barksdale boys are pretty much the kings of West Baltimore, narcotically speaking. Any chance they’re in business with my guy?”
“Maybe,” McNulty said. “But we’ve got the whole organization wiretapped, and we’ve got no indication that they’ve started selling this new product.”
Hank shrugged. “Well, it got there one way or another. Hell, maybe no one’s selling it at all. Maybe they’re just leaving it for people to find. Like Santa Claus.”
McNulty squinted in thought. “What’s the point of that, though? Santa Claus doesn’t get paid. I mean, you’re DEA. You ever seen someone work pro bono in the drug trade?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Hank.
“Hmm.” McNulty fell into silent contemplation. He couldn’t make any sense of this.
“What was the thing you said you needed to tell us?” Harris piped up.
“Oh! Right!” In all the excitement, he’d forgotten. “You said your gangsters got an invitation to Hoboken this Friday?”
Harris and Sanseverino nodded, and McNulty grinned.
“Well, get this,” he said. “So did ours.”
McNulty came sprinting back into the MCU.
“Hey, Lieutenant!” he yelled, but Daniels had heard him coming and already stood in the doorway of his office.
“Great news!” McNulty said, then he bent double and panted for several seconds. (He was in decent shape, but he didn’t exactly have the makings of a varsity athlete.) “Great news,” he repeated, still panting. “Remember that time you, me, and Lester met with Fitz and his boss? And they said the Bureau doesn’t do drug stuff anymore?”
“Yes?”
“But they told us they could make an exception if the drug stuff was connected to...” McNulty held out his hands, waiting for Daniels to fill in the blank, but Daniels just stared stonily at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence.
Freamon sat up straight. “Cosa Nostra or Colombians.”
“Yes!” McNulty pointed at him. “Well, guess what just got dropped in our laps.”
He recounted everything that had just happened at the FBI. By the time he was done, Freamon and Kima were on their feet with excitement, and Daniels’ face had gotten a little less stony. Like, in terms of hardness, it started out as granite (approximately a six or seven on the Mohs scale of rock—I mean, mineral hardness), and now it was more like travertine (approximately a four or five on the Mohs scale).
“It’s Mexico, not Colombia,” McNulty said when the story was done, “but it’s a major transnational drug trafficking organization. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
“But we don’t know if this meeting in New Jersey has anything to do with that,” Daniels said. “We don’t even know for sure that there’s a connection between Barksdale’s people and this meth manufacturer. Maybe it was Marlo Stanfield who brought the blue meth here. Or someone else entirely.”
“Okay, maybe,” McNulty grudgingly conceded. “But the call to Soprano suggested otherwise. The guy mentioned ‘the Barksdale Organization’ and ‘sky-blue methamphetamine’ to him.”
Freamon snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute, the call to Bodie tipped us off! Remember the phrases he used? ‘Crystal clear.’ ‘A wise guy would want to be there.’”
“Exactly! He was telling us. We just didn’t realize what he was saying. Whoever that guy was, he thinks that it’s all connected. Baltimore, Newark, and Albuquerque.”
“Okay, wait a minute,” Kima interjected. “Let’s say you’re right about this. Let’s say Stringer and Avon are going into business with the mob, and maybe with the cartel, too. That still doesn’t tell us who the guy on the phone was. I mean, are you sure it was the same guy who called both Bodie and Tony Soprano?”
“Harris and Sanseverino played the recording for me,” McNulty said. “It was the same voice.”
“Okay, so the same guy who wanted to arrange a meeting between two—maybe three—criminal organizations also wants the cops to spy on that meeting? I mean, what’s the end game here? It makes no sense.”
McNulty nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think the guy on the phone was acting solo. I’m betting there’s a fourth criminal organization of some sort involved here. They’re the ones pulling the strings, bringing all these other criminals together. But someone in this fourth group, the same man who was tasked with inviting Tony Soprano to the meeting in Hoboken, started getting cold feet about this whole crime thing. I guess he thought it would be too risky to call us directly. So instead, he called Bodie, pretending to have a message for Stringer, but the message was really for us.”
Kima whistled. “Damn. Pretty fancy way to go about being a rat.”
“So what exactly are you saying?” Daniels demanded. “You want to go to Hoboken this Friday at 3:00 and, what, see if Stringer Bell shows up for a meeting with some New Jersey mobsters, New Mexico drug lords, and mysterious men from New York?”
“No, Stringer himself won’t be there,” McNulty said sadly. “He won’t let himself be spotted in that kind of company. He’s way too cautious for that. And Avon couldn’t go even if he wanted to, ’cause he’s on parole. But I’d bet anything that someone connected to Stringer and Avon will be there. If this thing pans out, we’ll have everything we need to get the FBI on board with our investigation.”
The whole room was silent as Daniels thought it over.
“You go straight there on Friday,” he said at last, “and you come straight back. Greggs, you go with him. See to it he doesn’t do anything stupid. You need any more muscle, you’ll have to find it outside this unit.”
“Yes, sir,” Kima said gleefully. Then she turned to McNulty. “We should get in touch with Herc and Carver. See if they’ve come across this blue meth. If they have, maybe we can get them to come with us.”
“You handle that,” McNulty said. He rubbed his hands together, as if the friction would generate heat with which to cook up a nefarious scheme. “If we’re setting out for Hoboken Friday morning, I’ve got a lot I need to accomplish tomorrow.”