In some quarters, though, my welcome has worn thin, perhaps because both The Corner and The Wire offer a much darker vision of the problems that confront the city. There is consternation about the net effect of all this murderous narrative on Baltimore’s image and its viability as a tourist destination, to be sure. Conversely, there is also a peculiar pride at being part of a city that endures despite such an appalling and persistent rate of violence.
I know that sounds ridiculous-a hoary citing of lemons and lemonade-but there is something to it. From the first, Homicide was, I think, a blunt and clear-eyed response to the national neglect of urban problems, demonstrating if not our civic ability to solve those problems, then at least our honesty and wit in confronting them.
The Natty Boh beer ads used to declare Maryland to be “The Land of Pleasant Living,” just as a standard credo of local pride claims of Baltimore that “If you can’t live here, you can’t live anywhere.”
Such sentiments might seem grandly mocked by the contents of Homicide or The Corner or certainly, given its angry, political tone, The Wire. But no such sarcasm is intended, and among residents of this city I don’t sense that many feel particularly abused. If you live here, you know the good, and you still sense the civic ideal that has somehow managed to survive so much poverty, violence and waste, so much mismanagement and indifference.
Recently, the city paid a half million dollars to a consultant seeking a new slogan for itself:
“Baltimore-Get In On It”
I like it. An implied secret. As if you need to walk these streets for a while before you’re entitled to know for certain what is at stake in this city’s survival and why so many people still care.
But I confess that my favorite slogan came from a short contest sponsored on the daily newspaper’s website, where readers offered their own free suggestions to the highly paid image consultants, and one local resident, tongue in cheek, wrote:
“It’s Baltimore, hon… duck!”
The detectives would have recognized the humor, and, more than that, the temperment that gives rise to such humor. Hell, if they could buy the bumper sticker, they’d probably have it on the back of every unmarked unit.
These men lived and worked without illusion, and late at night, when I was rewriting sections of the book for the third and fourth time, I realized that I was trying to achieve a voice, a statement even, that they would recognize as true.
Never mind the demographics of bookbuyers, or the sensibilities of other journalists, or, God forbid, whoever might be judging some book award somewhere. Fifteen years ago, when I was trapped at my computer, the only judgments that mattered to me were those of the detectives. If they read the book and pronounced it honest, I would not feel the shame that comes from snatching pieces of human lives and putting them on display for all to see.
This is not to say that everything I wrote was complimentary or ennobling. There are pages of the book on which these men appear to be racist or racially insensitive, sexist or homophobic, where their humor derives from the poverty and tragedy of others. And yet with a body on the ground-black, brown, or, on rare occasion, white-they did their job regardless. In this graceless age of ours, any sense of duty is remarkable enough to excuse any number of lesser sins. And so readers learned to forgive, just as the writer learned to forgive, and six hundred pages later the very candor of the detectives was a quality, rather than an embarrassment.
In the preface to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee asked absolution for his journalistic trespass, declaring that “these I will write of are human beings, living in this world, innocent of such twistings as these which are taking place over their heads; and that they were dwelt among, investigated, spied on, revered and loved by other quite monstrous human beings, in the employment of others still more alien; and that they are now being looked into by still others, who have picked up their living as casually as if it were a book.”
There are many journalists who believe that their craft must burden itself with a nodding, analytic tone, that they must report and write with feigned, practiced objectivity and the presumption of omniscient expertise. Many are consumed by the pursuit of scandal and human flaw, and believe it insufficient to look at human beings with a skeptical yet affectionate eye. Their work is, of course, accurate and justifiable-and no closer to the actual truth of things than any other form of storytelling.
Years ago, I read an interview with Richard Ben Cramer in which he was accused by a fellow journalist of engaging in a love that dares not speak its name-at least not in newsrooms. Regarding the candidates he followed for What It Takes, his masterful narrative of presidential politics, Cramer was asked if he actually liked the men he was covering.
“Like them?” he replied. “I love them.”
How could he write a nine-hundred-page tome in their voices if he didn’t love every last one of them, warts and all? And what kind of journalist follows human beings for years on end, recording their best moments and their worst, without acquiring some basic regard for their individuality, their dignity, their value?
I admit it. I love these guys.
At this writing, Richard Fahlteich-a detective in Landsman’s squad in 1988-is a major and the commander of the homicide unit, though he is planning to retire after more than thirty years service within the month.
Lieutenant Terrence Patrick McLarney, who commanded a squad on D’Addario’s shift fifteen years ago, is a shift commander, having fought his way back to the unit after years of exile in the Western and Central Districts, where he was banished after his shift commander politely declined an invitation to fisticuffs in the headquarters garage.
The reason McLarney felt the need to extend such an invitation was simply that his shift commander was no longer Gary D’Addario, who had been promoted first to captain, and, later, to major and command of the Northeastern District. The man who replaced D’Addario did not understand the homicide unit, in the opinion of many. He certainly didn’t understand McLarney, who, despite his protestations, his calculated appearance and his general demeanor, happens to be one of the smartest, funniest and most honest souls I ever had the privilege to know.
For his part, D’Addario thrived not only as a district commander but as the technical advisor to Homicide and ensuing productions. His portrayal of Lieutenant Jasper, the tactical commander on the drama, brought, if not widespread acclaim, then an opportunity for many subordinate commanders to advise him on the value of his day job.
He was forced to resign abruptly three years ago by a police commissioner who never offered a reason, simply summoning D’Addario to his office and issuing the demand.
That this came a couple days after D’Addario first appeared in a brief scene of The Wire, playing the part of a grand jury prosecutor, may be relevant. The current city administration is known to dislike the HBO drama, and though D’Addario wasn’t the only department veteran to appear in episodes, he was the only ranking commander to do so at the time. I wrote a letter to the mayor, noting that the part was a neutral one and that D’Addario’s dialogue brought no discredit on the department. I suggested that if displeasure with the major stemmed from his appearance on the show, then the decision should be reconsidered, and, further, that the administration should inform us one way or another if it had concerns about officers appearing on the drama.
No response was forthcoming.
In 1995, Donald Worden retired on his own terms after more than three decades service. Kevin Davis-the Worden of Stanton’s shift-called it quits the same day. I made it a point to go out with the two veterans on their last shift, when they picked up a suspect from the city jail and tried unsuccessfully to get him to roll on an old murder. That story of their last day on the job was my last staff byline for the Sun-a personal metaphor of sorts, not that anyone was going to notice.