A detective is chatting to a young local at a crime scene, the body a few feet away, all the technicians and policemen going about their business. What has happened, the boy says, is that the dead man, who has been coming every Friday to a craps game on the street and snatching all the money as soon as the pot grew large enough for him, got killed because one of the other players ran out of patience. Or ran further out of patience than usual: usually they just beat him up. The detective is puzzled by the back story. If the man stole the money every time, why did they let him play for so long? The boy says: 'Got to. This is America, man.' We get a quick glimpse of the staring eyes of the corpse, and the credits start to roll. The first season of The Wire has begun.

LRB 27 May 2010 | PDF Download