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For someone who knew so much about him, and by association so much about Stacey and Kaylee, Mike didn’t worry about Gustavo Fring.
It would’ve been smart to worry, he knew that, but it never materialized. Fring, so neatly camouflaged by his fast food front, his charity work, his pleasant demeanor and the fact that he was short, slight, and bespectacled, could pass for a garter snake when he wanted. Mike knew he was a cobra, but he never danced. Never showed his hood.
Mike had come to this decommissioned plant four times already, picking up packages from an air duct in the ceiling of the old building’s western wing. He came in the early evenings, arriving just before the sun sank out of view and turned the whole plant into a scheme of black beams, shattered blue windows and dull grey dust shifting across the floors in the low desert wind.
Tonight he was there late, with no light for miles except his own headlights. When his Chrystler ebbed into the building’s shadow he switched them off, sat still in the cab until his eyes adjusted, and then moved inside.
Fring’s hatchback was waiting by the western entrance to the plant. Inside Mike saw dim light in one of the small, gutted offices off the main floor. He went in. Fring was sitting at an old desk, its surface had been brushed clear of dust and a floorplan of a Spanish style villa, the kind people much more powerful and stupid than Fring himself owned just across the border.
“Thank you for coming so late, Mr. Ehrmantraut. Please,” He raised a hand to a brushed off chair in front of the desk. Mike sat, put his eyes on Fring.
The hatchback made him think he had left directly from the restaurant to come here, and he’d expected Fring’s khaki and cornsilk camouflage. Instead Fring was all in black, so only his brown face and hands seemed to stand out against the darkness all around them. A piece of yellow light ran along the rim of his glasses.
“So what do we need to talk about, way out here in the dead of night?” Mike asked, getting the ball rolling.
Fring’s stoic, unemotive face was still. His eyes moved a few millimeters, from Mike’s bald head in the pale light down to the floorplan on the desk.
“Something very important to me.” He started, taking a number of manilla envelopes out of a black briefcase and pushing them across to Mike. He picked up the top folder, flipped it open and found a dossier on Eladio Vuente. Under him, capos, under them lieutenants. Vuentes, Salamancas, others.
After browsing the names of the cartel kingpin and his most effective goons, Mike brought his eyes back up to Fring.
“I don’t know if I can help you with this.” Mike let the voice that sounded just like his give the reasonable response.
“You haven’t even heard what I want to do yet.”
“I don’t need to hear it. I appreciate the way you do things, already. This is too different.”
“Too ambitious.”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t need to tell you,” Fring folded his hands in front of him, neat as ever. “This would be done with an abundance of care. Attention to detail. I’ve been patient for a long time, I can wait a little longer.”
“Then, sir, I think you should keep waiting. Then maybe forget about this.” Mike declared.
“I will not –” Fring’s composure cracked just for a moment, then he continued, calmly, in the same breath. “Forget about this. It is too important.”
Mike watched him look down at the floor plan. His eyes were on the back patio, where a blob on the map showed the outline of a pool. Fring looked up and fixed Mike with an intensity he rarely revealed to anyone.
“Without going into detail, this is the reason I have worked so hard. If you can’t help me with this then I will find someone else.” He spoke plainly, giving no impression of any disappointment, any anger. It was like Mike had refused the simplest favor. Mike wondered what could be important enough to ruffle Fring in the first place, so important that he would go against his own intellect and the advice of an ex-cop now-criminal to get it done.
“I believe our business tonight is concluded.” Fring spoke simply, taking the folders back and starting to put them away.
“What’s–” the voice that sounded like Mike’s started. Mike finished for it. “What’s so important about it? I’ve never known you to be so… Ambitious.”
Fring’s eyes moved across Mike’s face. He didn’t want to say, but he answered anyway.
“It is tied to something from early in my career. Several years ago now, but it’s not something I can let go of.”
“So it’s personal.”
“Not everything can be ‘just business.’” Fring spoke as he shuffled the folders away into his briefcase.
“Personal matters get people killed in this business, Mr. Fring. I know you don’t need me to tell you that.” Mike sighed heavily. “And I’d rather it didn’t happen to you.”
“That is,” Fring paused, his small managerial smile brightening his face for a moment. “Very kind of you. But I’m afraid there’s nothing else to be done about this.”
He started folding up the map. Mike sat forward, putting a hand on it. He was covering the back patio.
“Help me understand what could be so important about this.” He said. “For a man like you, what could make this so important?”
Fring looked up from the blue veins in Mike’s red hand to his face. In his eyes there was a small reflection of the yellow light, like a panther seeing through the dark.
“You know what it’s like to lose someone and find your world is suddenly meaningless.” He said, his voice only a soft hiss in the big empty darkness. Mike felt the old ache in his chest grow hot. “In your case you drowned yourself for a little while, then put yourself back together and took your revenge. That’s what has led you here. I envy you how easy your revenge must have been.”
“It wasn’t easy.” But two dirty cops in Philly were a lot easier to kill than a house full of high level cartel members. Fring wouldn’t have the luxury of a one man job, of taking revenge with just a few bullets. If they managed to get away at all there were still miles of desert, the border, the syndicate back in America having to accept Fring as their new leader.
“But you don’t regret it.” Fring might’ve been asking. It was hard to tell with him.
“...No.” Mike admitted. “I don’t regret it. Who was it, for you?”
Fring’s face was somber, more than his usual stoicism. He was looking back on a face it was getting hard to remember. Mike’s chest burned a little hotter.
“I never called him my brother until he was gone. And only then because it was the one term that people would accept.” Fring’s eyebrows moved, silently judging a litany of people Mike would never meet. It sounded familiar enough, he had heard a lot of talk like that back in the 80’s, out of New York, Philly, it was everywhere for a while. They made a quilt about it in DC. Fring cleared his throat and continued. “If you tell someone you’re mourning family they understand the severity of it much more clearly. So you see, I can’t let this go any more than you could let go of your son.”
Mike watched him very carefully leave Matty’s name out of the conversation. Fring was like that, he knew how to show respect. Mike saw now that his respect for the ex-cop was real.
“I know you’ll understand, your refusal means we never discussed this matter.” Fring stimulated, growing calm and stony again.
“What exactly did you have in mind?” Mike asked.
Fring told him. It took a while to explain but, as always, Fring had thought through every detail. Right down to poisoning himself along with the other capos, and the exact route he would take to the bathroom to throw up. Mike never considered himself impressed by the criminal world, but he did find Fring’s plan comforting in its thoroughness.
The only thing he would need was reliable people to mitigate any action when the signs of the poisoning began. The exact time was still to be determined. It could be years before they would act, but getting every member in his folders would be worth it. And Fring wouldn’t settle for anything less.
When the explaining was done Mike’s chest was still hot. Fring, to his credit, hadn’t lost an ounce of his composure as he explained, but with his plan hanging in the air and dotted on the map he was watching Mike very closely. Want was in his eyes.
“I don’t ask simply because I trust you.” He said. “Or because you’re an outsider. Or even because you’re excellent at your job.”
Fring didn’t rely on flattery, Mike didn’t often hear it. These were simply the facts.
“I want this done with real seriousness.” Fring continued. “Professionalism is useful, but I also require my partner in this to understand the gravity of it. You know what it’s like to have your heart irreparably broken. So I know you understand what I need.”
Mike thought of the hell this could bring down on his head. On Kaylee and Stacey. On Fring’s operation. Then he thought about the long, alcohol-choked time after Matty died. It hadn’t been more than a year before he acted, although the pain had seemed endless, the days long and pointless. And it all hurt just as bad now as it had when the call came in. And he hadn’t waited long at all to do something about it.
How long had Fring held this? How long could someone hold so much pain in their body without losing their mind? Years and years of lackey work, of smiling in their faces and keeping his head down. Of calling the man his ‘brother’ instead of ‘husband.’ No, they never even got to use that one. Mike guessed they called each other by their names, and it was all over before Fring could hang any other title on him.
He sighed out through his nose.
“This thing might take some time,” he said, restating what Fring had already admitted in his explanation. “If you want to do it right, get all of them, and you’ll have to do it right… Then it’ll take some time for the moment to arise.”
“I understand that.”
“And you understand that it’s not a given you’ll be walking out of there. Even with my help, anyone can get lucky with a shot.”
“Or unlucky.” Fring added.
“Right…” Mike felt the long fall ahead of him, sitting across the table from him and watching carefully. He thought of money but decided payment wasn’t worth bringing up tonight. Fring had called him here to see if he could be asked to do this at all. Mike could ask for the world tied in a red ribbon and Fring would get it for him. If he would only do this.
“With all that in mind,” Mike said. “I’ll do what I can.”
Fring’s face broke into a smile bright enough to electrify the whole plant. His eyes shone. He nodded and put out his hand.
“Alright then,” his voice was an excited puff. “This is wonderful news.”
“On one condition.”
“Yes?”
“May I call you Gus from now on?”
Gus’s head tilted to the side, a cobra hearing the pipe. He straightened a moment later, nodded once and smiled.
“Yes, if I may call you Mike.”
Mike shook his hand.
“It’s a deal.”