Duck and Cover

"Duck and Cover" is the eighth episode of the second season of the HBO original series The Wire. The episode was written by George Pelecanos from a story by David Simon & George Pelecanos and was directed by Dan Attias. It originally aired on July 20, 2003. Plot After failing to reconcile with his ex-wife, McNulty goes on a drinking binge and tries to drive home drunk. After he crashes his car and cuts his hand, McNulty eats at a diner and ends up having a one-night stand with the waitress. While drinking with Bunk, he expresses a desire to work murder cases again. Pearlman is shown how phone logs and photographic evidence link the east side warehouse to White Mike and Proposition Joe. They have identified Serge and tracked his cell phone through truck rental records. His phone records show that he calls the warehouse every day that a container goes missing. Herc and Carver have linked Nick to Frog, information which they have falsely reported as being obtained from an informant. The judge signs off on the detail's request for a wiretap, but has Herc and Carver do chores in his house in exchange. Daniels is persuaded to appeal to Rawls to allow McNulty's transfer to the Sobotka detail, which Rawls reluctantly does. Meanwhile, in a scheme to recover the money Carver lost on the destroyed surveillance bug, Herc gets his cousin Bernard to pose for photos as their fake informant, "Fuzzy Dunlop." Carver hands the paperwork to Daniels, who balks at the name and high price but signs off anyway. Pearlman meets with Bunk and Greggs and learns that the same company owns both the warehouse and the apartments, which they speculate are being used as a cat house. They decide they need someone to go undercover to infiltrate the apartment as a john and settle on McNulty when he reports in on the Sobotka detail. Greggs and McNulty set up surveillance of a parking garage at the apartment building. They pull over one of the johns and get him to explain how to contact the madam. Freamon, Beadie, and Prez notice a potential container theft from a ship where Horseface is working as a checker. This time the surveillance work runs in combination with the wiretaps and the detail tracks the container to the warehouse. When Frank sends out a second container as a decoy, McNulty rushes to tail it. Beadie arranges to slow down the rig with a fictitious traffic stop until McNulty can get into position.