In Narcotics, Herc is sharing his wisdom with a couple of extremely young-looking detectives. If by "young," you mean "dumb." Daniels enters in time to hear Herc brag about making "big, hairy-balled cases" like "this Barksdale thing": "And all that mess you call police work down in the districts -- all that fuck-somebody-up and rip-and-run bullshit? It won't play down here." Daniels looks on, amused, and takes off just as Herc is tapping his temple to tell his acolytes that "this" is what makes cases. Good skin?

Courthouse. McNulty sits on a bench in a hallway, looking worn-out and over it. Presently, the doors to a courtroom open and Brianna strides out, followed by Stringer. She throws McNulty a look, but he doesn't seem to mean anything to her. Stringer, however, takes a moment to stare down McNulty imperiously, and then takes a couple of steps so that he can lean down to McNulty's face and tell him -- genuinely? It couldn't be, could it? -- "Nicely done." McNulty looks too shocked to have had actual contact with Stringer to say anything, and just shifts in his seat as he watches his worthy adversary walk off.

Terrace. Bodie's on the phone, berating someone about a late delivery. He ends the call and tells a nearby henchman that if Roc-Roc doesn't arrive with a re-up in ten minutes, the henchman has leave to whoop the said Roc-Roc's ass. Left with nothing to do for the moment, Bodie takes a breather to gaze up at the high-rise buildings around him.

The shot segues us to a couple of high-rises downtown, and then we're in Rawls's office, where he's blowhardily telling an unseen someone that he knows his auditor did a stint in Homicide a while back, but Rawls wants to talk about how he runs the unit: "Because how I run it is how it runs." The camera pulls back so that we can see the cop getting jumped in is Lester, who's sitting in front of Rawls's desk, Jay next to him. Rawls blathers about the rotation system, and the order in which cops take calls, and finally leans in to tell Lester, "You do not play the game for yourself. You play it for us." Lester nods, seeming perhaps a tad grossed-out to be lining up behind the likes of Rawls, but happy nonetheless not to be returning to Pawn Shop.