Contains spoilers for this episode and earlier episodes.
After three days without using, Bubbles meets his sponsor Walon, who speaks plainly about addiction and the consequences of his own past. Avon and Stringer, meanwhile, tighten their operation after Omar’s attack and ask Wee-Bey to arrange a truce. Stringer persuades Avon to route communications through him. Freamon traces resupply calls to a payphone in Pimlico and follows them to a suburban stash house. Orlando is arrested in an undercover cocaine buy and gives police Avon’s name to avoid a harsher charge. Burrell then orders a rushed buy-bust using Orlando, despite Daniels wanting time to build the case.
McNulty finds Wallace back in the towers. Wallace gives the detail names of Stringer, Wee-Bey and others involved in Brandon’s murder, so Daniels arranges to move him to his grandmother’s home on the Eastern Shore. Omar meets Stringer under Proposition Joe’s supervision to discuss a truce, but he suspects it is a trap and leaves Baltimore for New York. Greggs rides undercover as Orlando’s girlfriend when the police go ahead with the buy-bust. Savino abandons the car, and two gunmen fire into it. Orlando is killed and Greggs is shot, left with serious injuries. The detail’s attempt to use Orlando as a route into the organisation collapses into an ambush, and the episode ends with the cost of Burrell’s demand for quick action.