Another Marlo phone call, and another picture of a clock prints out at the detail office -- Freamon's staring at a stack of about a dozen of them at this point. He whips out his cell phone, presumably to place a call to his partner-in-fake-crime McNulty. "We gotta talk," Freamon sighs. Bring your decoder ring.

Back at the continuity-shattering bar, Gus has just finished laying out Templeton's defense of his woman-dead-by-seafood story -- that there's a notorious check-kiter who uses the name of the dead woman's sister in her criminal escapades and that's why neighborhood busybodies think the sister absconded with the funds from the scholarship set up in the wake of Templeton's story. "Does that seem possible?" Gus asks Mello. "To go through the court system with a false I.D.?" No, Mello says, it is not possible, at least in the case of a multiple offender. "Someone's yanking your chain," Mello says. And that someone is named M. Scott Templeton -- the M stands for made-up. Gus thoughtfully sips his cocktail, as Al Swearengen, former President Bartlet, and the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 all stroll in for a nightcap. Well, not really, but why not at this point?

McNulty arrives at the Detail Office so that Freamon can fill him in on what they've figured out about the clocks pictures. They're definitely a code, and they're not related to time -- summary over. Now's the point in the investigation where Freamon sure could use some extra manpower -- "surveillance cars, man hours. We're going to have to stay on these guys until those clocks start making sense." Good news there -- thanks to McNulty's fraud and deceit, the brass are throwing more resources at him than he knows what to do with. Freamon correctly senses there's some bad news attached to that. "It's all around the office that I'm giving out hours and money for people to work other cases," McNulty concedes. Freamon stops and stares, sparking McNulty to flash another one of those punch-face/win-prize smirks that his face is going to freeze into one of these days. "I can't help it, Lester," McNulty shrugs. "It's the kind of person I am." What? Reckless and unable to fathom consequences? I'll grant you that one, McNulty. Freamon, however, is more concerned that this is all going to blow up in McNulty's face, taking him out, too. "Who's going to complain?" McNulty asks. Well, just off the top of my head...Bunk, Landsman, Rawls, any detective who feels like you've stiffed him, some conscience-plagued do-gooder, Beadie... Do you want the rest of the list alphabetically or in order of likelihood? Anyhow, Freamon asks for eight men and cars to continue his Marlo probe; McNulty notes that he's been promised men from the districts and a surveillance supervisor, so it's just a matter of finding officers they can trust to keep their mouths shut. Sort of the anti-McNulty's in that regard.