Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 10

We're back with General Felix, and it's difficult to tell what time it is. Either this is a continuation of the phone call we left off on, or this is the second call Felix has made to McNulty. McNulty has just told the General that Jason has just destroyed his last tracker dot. Felix is convinced now that Jason is someone deeply sinister who must be apprehended. His evidence is the total lack of police records on Jason. McNulty thinks Jason split Los Vegas the instant he found the tracker dot; General Felix says no; he's betting Jason is still there. He also orders McNulty who is most def home, high, and ready for bed to take a pill and return to HQ. As McNulty hangs up, Felix is irritated by McNulty's drug use. (Once again, quite likely perfectly legal.)

Alys (who is reading McNulty's police file) says Felix should consider that maybe Jason is broadly who he says he is. She points out skill-and-appearance wise at least, his story fits what Kathy has told police. This is also irritating to Felix who tells Alys to GTFO. She unperturbed, speculates he might be the singer who sang the latest pornochord hit----

Felix cuts her off with a bribe. If she just GTFO at this juncture, she can have a perfectly centered one-dollar black U.S. Trans-Mississippi stamp. For stamp collectors, it is a holy grail. Alys, who like her brother is super into stamps, is kind of blown away by this and agrees, and leaves for the roof. Felix got it in a trade with a somebody heading to a forced labor camp; a stamp for freedom. By himself, Felix gets introspective about why he finds Alys so disturbing. Even as the Police General in a dystopian police state plays by the rules, he thinks. Hypothetically, no police general would have somebody killed if they did the state a favor first. But Alys: she doesn't play by the rules. If you try to force her, she just becomes more chaotic and even less rule bound. Felix is terrified of this. He half expects to get home and find Alys burned the stamp, just to demonstrate her chaos-ness.

He also puts on some classical music and muses about poetry, thinking at last that the reason he is right about Jason sticking in Las Vegas, is because he can think like the enemy, not like a cop (viz. McNulty, who assumes that Jason is always acting rationally.) Jason might be huge, but he was revealed apparently through a fuckup of some sort. If you assume he's this important sinister dude, how did he end up in a fleabag hotel with no papers, and then get papers through the desperate stratagem of bribing the guy at the desk? Put on the one hand what it takes to vanish entirely from the databanks, and this amateur hour stuff on the other, 10 to 1 this was some sort of blunder. I mean: why not just stay in the hotel? What was so important that he had to wander around the edge of Watts with a PI?

Herb (General Felix's Lt.) points out it is only by mistakes that they have any chance of catching the really sophisticated people - otherwise they would be an unknowable metaphysical entity. But now the General has noticed him, dum dum dum dum

General Felix checks in with Las Vegas. He ordered Las Vegas to conduct a sweep of the upscale apartment complex Jason signal was last detected at. (Somewhat hilariously compared to today's tech, the dot only returns a signal accurately enough to say Jason is in this building.) So of the 36 or so units, 30 have been searched. No Taverner, though. Feeling vaguely disappointed, Felix rings off, telling the uniform to call him direct when they bag him. Waiting for McNulty to get to his desk and for the police squad to find Jason, he worries about the idiots doing the sweep and their noisy goddamn ways. (If you're picturing a bunch of Half-Life overwatch soldiers or a SWAT team, that actually seems a bit off. Written in 1972, SWAT was brand new, and these appear to be just a mob of uniform police.) Herb tries to make a bet with the General: five gold Kriegerands that they bag Taverener but this yields nothing. Intrigued, the general bets $1000 dollars that this opens a whole new vista of sinister....bad....guys for the police. Herb is nonplussed by this, because he frankly doesn't have that kind of money.

New call for Felix, the police captain in Vegas reports radar/thermal imaging has detected a male about Taverner's reported size in one of the un-searched apartments. Felix orders the surrounding apartments be quietly cleared out, then move in to capture.