“That’s some Spidey sh*&,” Marlo opines in his usual, understated fashion, as he ponders how Omar could have possibly jumped out the window of a condo and survived.

Marlo’s minions (hey, if they ever want to do a spinoff of The Wire, that’d be a great title) search all over Baltimore for the missing stickup artist, Omar. All the vacants (all? really? that would indeed be some feat), his usual haunts, Snoop checks out the hospitals for her “cousin” who got all “cut up” by going through a window, canvassing the neighborhood (loved the scene where one of those guys pretends to be a cop, asking a neighbor around the corner from the condos if she’d seen someone because some guy attacked a woman; the neighbor wants to know if the woman’s OK, and Marlo’s guy is kind of distracted and doesn’t quite know what she’s talking about for a moment).

And then we learn the truth: Omar’s in the janitor’s closet in the condo building. He hasn’t even left yet.

That’s one resourceful guy, though. A crutch out of a broom; a beer bottle subbing for a gun. Before you know it, he’s back on his feet and armed again and telling anyone and everyone that he’s looking for Marlo, and he wants Marlo to know that. And, even more importantly, he wants Marlo to know that he thinks he’s a wuss (not exactly the terminology he used, but shares some of the same letters) for sending his guys out to take care of him instead of getting his own hands dirty.

Omar wants Marlo, and wants him bad. That became rather apparent after he blew up the car with the money in it.

My prediction? (Which could be so totally, completely and utterly wrong.) Prop Joe’s right-hand man  helps Omar get to Marlo to kill him in return for his having killed Joe. There would be no love lost there.

How ‘bout that Marlo, disbanding the co-op? Where will the drug dealers of Greater Baltimore share real-estate tips from now on?

But, more importantly, it’s clear that Marlo plans to be A No. 1, not merely the lynchpin in a co-op. One thing I wasn’t absolutely clear on —  did Marlo actually admit he killed Prop Joe or just strongly imply it? I thought it was the latter, but that’s less clear to me in the light of day. Either way, he left little doubt that it was his doing.

Meanwhile, Lester brings Sydnor in on the illegal wiretap, giving the younger detective the opportunity to get as far away from Freamon as he can, if he’s not comfortable with it. Lester wisely keeps the truth of how they got the wiretap from Sydnor, who can at least claim plausible deniability on the whole “homeless serial killer issue.”

And, despite a front-page story in the paper, despite the mayor making the killer the department’s top priority, McNulty can’t get any more resources than he already has, which is him and Kima. And Kima has a real murder she’s working.

If anything good has come out of McNulty’s insanity, it’s that Bunk has been re-energized to solve the Marlo murders —  with real police work. He’s going through all the files again, and Kima’s there to help. They’re frustrated at every turn (a lot of the forensic evidence got mislabeled because a temporary worker —  no medical benefits or overtime —  doesn’t know what “et. al” means, the serial killer case is top priority for any lab work), but Bunk actually gets somewhere (a very small somewhere) by episode’s end.

Bug’s father’s murder (which, when I wrote yesterday’s post, I had no idea would figure so prominently in last night’s episode!) happened just outside some of the vacants where bodies were found. Bunk thinks it might somehow, possibly be connected. An interview with Michael’s and Bug’s mom gives him the slightest little nugget of hope: Michael knew Bug’s dad wasn’t coming home long before anyone else even knew he’d been killed. And since then, Michael’s been running with Marlo’s gang, his mom tells Bunk.

This work last night also gave us this season’s first look at Randy, who went from being a pretty sweet kid last year to a completely emotionally closed off hardass. He’s not giving the cops anything. Last time he did, he was labeled a rat and his foster mother was severely burned in a fire and he got the crap beaten out of him. More than once. And the cops dropped the ball on him. That scene last year where he’s yelling at Carver, who’s walking away down the hall, was heartbreaking.

And, now, the newsroom:

For anyone who thinks it unlikely that there’s any editor out there who would describe a story in the way Whiting did, saying they needed to get at “the Dickensian aspect,” is unfortunately incorrect.

Now, I haven’t worked for many folks who would so describe a project, but there are certainly some overeducated editors out there who look at newspapering almost as a literary pursuit. Fortunately, there’s usually enough gruff (and realistic) editors like Gus there to balance it out.

But now that homelessness is the top priority for the city, it’s the paper’s top priority, too. After all, the killer’s calling their reporter. Because he worked the beat, pounded the pavement. That’s how stories are found.

I have to admit, I was kind of surprised that Templeton actually tried to do the job that night, spending the night with the homeless. I was less surprised when he turned tail after a mean dog barked at him, coming back instead in the morning when things were, perhaps, less frightening.

He looks over the homeless guys picking up donated baked goods from a box on the curb and, basically, chooses the one who scares him the least. They sit down to chat, and this guy, a veteran, has a tale to tell. Templeton writes down every word.

For once, he’s not making it up. I suspect, however, that this “veteran” is making the story up, and that’s how Templeton’s going to get caught.

Suspicions are being raised again, though, when a reader tells another reporter her concerns about one of Templeton’s stories about some scholarship money not going where it was supposed to. Gus asks Templeton to check it out, make sure he didn’t get taken. That’s pretty much standard procedure; people complain about news stories all the time and usually don’t have a leg to stand on. There are times when sources tell us something we should have checked out further, but we didn’t because we ran out of time or forgot or any of a host of reasons. And that something turns out to be false or, less malevolently, just wrong. That something usually isn’t too major, and a correction is run.

I’m thinking they’re going to need a lot more than corrections to solve Templeton.

Or, is his work on the homeless murders going to be his ticket to The Washington Post? Will he not get caught?

That would be, after all, very much in keeping with The Wire.