Chapter Text
Howard’s first thought was to wonder how she dressed like…that in public. His next: why did his secretary let a strange woman into his office? HHM might no longer have the same sterling prestige it once did before Jimmy and Kim took it to the cleaners, but he did insist upon maintaining standards.
She stood up as he strode inside and shook his hand. She had a firm grip, he noted, but that and her smile were offset by the presence of gold piercings glittering in three places in her nose, another vertically through her lower lip, and several lining the curves of her ears. He imagined more were obscured by her silver hair, which was cut in a neat, angled bob. She wore an incongruously ornate silk dress in cream and green, and boots laced up to her knees. She also had tattoos on her forearms, though again, since she was otherwise covered up to the chin, he imagined not all of them were on display.
In short: not someone he would ordinarily or willingly have welcomed into his office. All in all, she looked more like one of Jimmy’s scummy confederates. Howard needed to have a firm talk with his secretary.
“Hello Mr. Hamlin,” she said, dropping her hand.
“Howard, please,” he said, willing to humor this situation if only to nurse it along to a point he could make it disappear. He went around the desk and gestured to the chair she had risen from. “Sit down. Janine said that you had something you wished to speak with me about? Something personal?”
She hesitated as she sat again, an almost uncertain smile crossing her lips that did not reach her eyes. The color of her hair must not have been natural, since her eyebrows were dark and thick. Howard was no expert on women’s fashion, but his niece in Raleigh, who liked to think she was, complained bitterly that she had been born with eyebrows that she was forced to pluck into high, thin arches. This woman, if she was any more than her mid-20's at all, looked completely out of place from head to toe, like someone out of a movie—like Blade Runner, or something.
She crossed her ankles and sat very straight, hands in her lap. Such a posture was more often the habit of older women of a certain status, and again, Howard noted how unpleasantly incongruous this was. It left him uncertain, and with strangers in his office he did not like feeling uncertain. Certainly not now.
“I know about what happened with Lalo and Jimmy McGill. And you, and Kim Wexler. Why Kim is in jail, why you almost got disbarred, why you almost died—the whole nine yards. I’m aware of your actions as well, Mr. Hamlin. Do I need to go into detail? Because I will.”
His heart dropped into his stomach, but Howard was much too good a lawyer to give up the ghost immediately.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re—”
“I can bring physical proof, if you like: a complete recounting of events—which you will only hear over the phone, and then I will go straight to the FBI anonymous tip line,” she went on, calmly, but with a chilly firmness made somewhat unsettling by the little smile that threatened to peel back into an animal grin. Her flat eyes never left his. She wore makeup heavily around them, sharp cat’s eye liner that made her look foxlike. “I have names. Or we can find a solution here and now.”
“What is this,” he demanded, feeling like he no longer had any air in his lungs. His heart pounded, sick. “What do you want? Who are you?”
“Who I am is not important.”
“Are you working for Jimmy?” he spat. “For Kim Wexler? Is this some elaborate attempt at extortion? What does he want? Money? He’s not making enough of it off helping drug dealers and murderers?” Howard had lost everything and only just barely recovered, let alone started rebuilding the reputation of the firm. The last he had heard, Jimmy was practicing law out of a strip mall and paying for grossly magniloquent commercials that only ran late at night.
She stared at him, apparently taken aback.
“I’m not working for anyone but myself.”
“Then what is it you want,” he demanded, staring at her as if he wished he could set her on fire by that alone. What filth was it that had crawled across his doorstep now? He braced himself for anything: dizzying amounts of money, some perverse misapplication of the law…
“In exchange for neither going to the FBI, nor ruining your life—” He snorted, and she blinked as if the response surprised her a little, “I assume you have a guest bedroom.”
Surely, he hadn’t heard her right. “Excuse me?”
“I have nowhere to go in Albuquerque,” she said. “And I’m sure you have a guest bedroom. I need a room indefinitely, and you are going to provide that room. That is what I want: a place to live indefinitely, rent-free.”
“You walked in here and blackmailed me in order to gain access to my guest bedroom,” he asked, carefully, heatedly. It didn’t seem real—it felt absurd. Two minutes ago, he had been contemplating whether or not he wanted a cobb salad for lunch. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“I wish it were.”
Would that he had never heard the name McGill. Chuck had known Jimmy best, in the end, and for so long Howard had been such a damn naïve fool. Howard had gone to bat for Jimmy more times than he wanted to remember, but it didn’t matter in the end, did it?
And Kim; well. She was a talented lawyer but there was no accounting for taste, and Jimmy ruined her, too.
“If you’re going to be living at my house, I would like to know your name.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Mina. Mina Scott. And don’t worry, I’m housebroken.”
“I’m very pleased to hear it,” he told her, faking every last bit of his smile.