...and then it's sunrise. A police helicopter hovers over the canal. Down on the water, McNulty, using a big pool skimmer or something, hooks a floating dead body. He calls to Diggins to ask whether they should bring her into the boat, but Diggins emphatically tells him not to: "She'll fall apart if we try to bring her in...We'll hook her real good. We'll tow her slowly over to the pier." Love-ly. Diggins asks how long she seems to have been in the water. McNulty (who's now brought her over so that her head is touching the side of the boat) says that she's "fresh," although both her legs are broken. Diggins speculates that she jumped from the bridge that we can see behind McNulty. Sure, a "probably" theory is probably enough to satisfy McNulty.

Then we're in a tiny, depressing basement room, not improved with loud banging from around the ceiling. After a moment, Nick sticks a leg out from under the covers, and then we cut up to the kitchen, where his mother, Joan (Elisabeth Noone) stomps on the floor again to wake him up. In the basement, Nick sighs, and steps across the room to turn on his stereo, which starts playing something with the lyrics "I am the world's forgotten boy." Better to be forgotten, Nick, than disdained, like your ridiculous cousin.

Nick staggers to the top of the stairs; in the foreground, we can see the dirty, holey socks of whatever lout has fallen asleep on the couch, and Joan, stomping away. "All right, Ma, shit," whines Nick, before jostling Ziggy's foot (for of course it is he) to try to wake him up (unsuccessfully). Joan flintily tells Nick that there won't be any breakfast for drunken losers who can't manage to wake up in time to "catch a ship." "What ship?" mutters Nick. Joan says that Nick's father has reported the Talco Line in, which "makes two ships at North Point." Nick pours a little hair of the dog into a glass as he says that the ship is actually the Atlantic Light, and that it won't be there until the afternoon. Joan swats him with a towel, telling him that's no excuse. Nick swallows his whole beer in one gulp, and heads out, burping, to the head. Joan curses the lousy drunks she's sharing her morning with, and barks at Nick through the door not to leave without taking Ziggy with him: "I gotta clean in there, and I ain't gonna do it around his carcass." Ziggy apparently takes no offense. I suppose when you're Ziggy, you kind of can't.