Slim Charles: when survival and likability collide

Slim Charles started on the west side with Avon, parlayed east with Prop Joe, did a short run with Marlo and ended up across a table from the Greek. Moving between crews like that usually gets you marked as a man with no loyalty. Nobody ever said it about Tall Man.

Everyone around him wanted one specific thing. Marlo wanted his name. Avon wanted his corners. Stringer wanted the drug game reorganized into a Fortune 500 company. Slim Charles wanted to survive, and he ran a code to do it.

When Omar had him lined up after Butchie, he told the truth. He could have lied. He could have traded something for his life. He offered to help Omar go at Prop Joe if Joe turned out to be behind it, and that conviction is what made Omar put the gun down.

The reason he could keep moving is that he never claimed to be more than he was. He did not talk himself into being a businessman the way Stringer did, and he did not dig in and die on a corner the way Avon would have. When Marlo offered him Hungry Man's seat on the co-op, he turned it down at the table in front of everybody and said plainly that running things was not for him. Cheese would have sniped his own uncle for that chair.

The one time he showed anything was popping Cheese, and that was for Joe. It worked out for him anyway. The man he saved that day ended up sitting with the Greek, and Slim Charles was next to him, holding down number two.