Prison. Stringer's just told Avon about the Omar/Mouzone confrontation. Avon can't believe Mouzone could have been ambushed in his own room. Stringer rumbles that Mouzone will be all right. Avon doesn't care about that: "You put on out-of-town talent at a high price, you expect them to get the motherfucking job done." Stringer tells Avon how Mouzone fired the Barksdalies as clients, basically. Avon crabs that with Mouzone gone, they're worse off than they were when he came, since they can't let the word get out that the organization is so weak that its imported muscle got shot in its own damn hotel room because its bodyguard stopped to play with a dog. (I paraphrase.) Stringer says that they have to hit back, "make a statement," except that Mouzone won't finger his shooter -- as much as the shooter might enjoy that. (Sorry.) (I had to!) Avon demands to know why Stringer would even ask Mouzone who shot him. Stringer doesn't get it, and Avon spits, "How you gonna ask a soldier like Mouzone a question like that? Either he gonna say, or he gonna go and work it out. Either way, you ain't got to be axing him shit." Stringer blinks a whole bunch of times -- because this is shit he didn't learn in Econ class -- and finally offers some of the shit he did: "Every market-based business runs in cycles, and we going through a down cycle right now." This goes over about as well as you'd expect; Avon isn't much for the book-learning: "The street is the street. Always." Stringer nods, chastened, and sighs that they're going to get through "this bullshit." Avon says that Stringer just needs to "hold tight" until Avon's free again. Stringer, with all due deference, says that's true, but that until then, they "gotta do what [they] can do, when [they] can do it." Avon finally relents, and tells Stringer to go to Prop Joe: "You run it as you see fit. Least 'till I get home, you do." "No doubt," says Stringer ("no doubt" already thinking of some trumped-up charge he could put on Avon to keep him in jail), putting his fist against the glass and toasting, "Us, man." Avon looks suspicious, but gives Stringer a half-assed glass dap and takes off. Stringer rubs his face, because he hates it when they fight.