Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Howard was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Wherever his body was, only Mike and his henchman knew, but he had been declared legally dead by the State of New Mexico. Howard Hamlin was as dead as a doornail.

Saul Goodman, of course, knew he was dead. How could it be otherwise? His blood had stained the floor next to the place where Saul had once stood, cowering in fear. Saul was one of only two living people who had seen him die — who also, arguably, had inadvertently caused his death — and the other living person, Kim Wexler, was… well, she was out of the picture entirely. 

Naturally, Saul was not so dreadfully cut up about the sad event. Certainly not. It was part of the past, never to be spoken of again, never to be thought of again. Because Saul Goodman was an excellent lawyer, and his practice was the only thing that mattered.

Howard’s death must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I shall soon relate. If, for example, we were not perfectly convinced that Sam Wheat died at the beginning of Ghost, there would be nothing remarkable in his dancing with Molly Jensen later on in the film.

Such is the case with Howard Hamlin.

Saul, while claiming never to think of his deceased former employer, retained hints of the man’s influence over his life. Some law professionals who had known both men whispered behind Saul’s back that he had come to fold his pocket squares just as Hamlin had used to do, and that his suits were a garish, cartoonish, Technicolor imitation of the ones Howard had had tailor-made.

Saul, people said, was a flamboyant, peacocking, screeching, lecherous, needy, covetous sinner. Charming sometimes, perhaps, but ultimately callous and greedy, without true friends or relations. When folks stopped him in the street or outside the courthouse, it was to bestow upon him his own catchphrase — “Better Call Saul, dude!” — not to say, with genuine warmth, “Hey, Saul, my man, how are you? We should catch up soon!” No women hoped for a date with him, for his only “dates,” it was known, were with the women he paid handsomely. No fellow lawyers asked him for legal advice; they merely rolled their eyes, saying, “Saul will be Saul,” expecting him to stretch the acceptable boundaries of the law at every turn. The only adoration he accrued was from the clients he cheerfully exonerated after they committed distasteful, degrading, dastardly deeds.

But what did Saul care! It was the very thing he liked. To burst his way through the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance with his brash manner and larger-than-life persona, was his modus operandi.

Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve of 2009 — Saul Goodman sat in his strip mall office, chatting endlessly on his Bluetooth headset about various ambulances to chase. It was cold, but not quite freezing and certainly lacking in snow, for Albuquerque rarely attained the wintry ideals of picturesque Christmas cards with glistening snow coating the streets and sidewalks. If anything, there was the hint of a light drizzle outside, but even this fizzled out mid-afternoon. Now it was nearly closing time; Saul had deigned to close early, at 5:45 p.m. rather than six, given that it was Christmas Eve.

The door of Saul’s office was open, so that he might keep his eye upon his receptionist Francesca Liddy, who in a dismal, cordoned-off area beyond, a sort of tank, was confirming appointments for the following day. Or at least she was attempting to confirm appointments, for very few clients ever answered these calls, and most simply showed up in the morning without making appointments in advance, hoping for the best.

Saul heard the front door open just as he ended a call, and looked up.

“Hey, man, merry Christmas,” drawled a mellow voice. “God bless.” It was the voice of Saul’s occasional bodyguard, Huell Babineaux, who had stumbled into the office, clearly after already having had a few drinks. Upon his head was a Santa hat with “I’m Too Sexy” written in silvery painted script, and he was wearing a Christmas sweater with a gigantic Rudolph knitted on it.

“What? Oh. Christmas. Yeah. Whatever,” Saul replied.

“Aw, come on, boss, you don’t mean that. It’s a special day.”

“It’s not even Christmas yet. It’s the day before Christmas. And tomorrow? Just another Friday. I’ve got Francesca out there confirming appointments as we speak.”

“You can’t be having clients here tomorrow,” Huell said, aghast. “It’s a sacred day. Jesus was born.”

“You know who else was recently born? A kid whose paternity is in question — as was Jesus’s, I have to assume — and I’ve got a poor beleaguered guy who I need to extricate from the stifling shackles of child support. So yeah, I’ll be working.”

“Francesca too?”

“Francesca too.”

Huell gave a resigned sigh. “Well, man, I was gonna invite you to a thing at my house tomorrow, so never mind about that. But if you get bored later, me and Kuby and a few of the guys are going out for drinks at Louie’s, since our families ain’t in town. You could come along. Francesca’s welcome too, if she wants.”

Saul, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Yeah,” again, and followed it up with “Whatever.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a whatever, Huell! I’ll make it if I make it.”

“Hey, don’t be a grinch, boss,” said Huell.

“I’m not a grinch,” Saul said irritably, “I just don’t do Christmas like some people do. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“If you say so,” Huell said, shrugging. The Santa hat nearly slipped off his head, and he righted it. Saul thought he saw something in Huell’s eyes that suggested he knew better, and it caused him to draw up straight in his chair and put his feet on the desk.

“Hey, Honey Tits,” he called out to Francesca, “You all finished out there?”

“I don’t respond to that name and you know it,” she called back. “How ‘bout I call you Wrinkly Balls? You like that?”

Huell shook his head. “Why you gotta talk to her like that?”

Saul shrugged bemusedly. “What? She doesn’t care.”

Huell gave him a look. “You had a good thing once, you know that? I was there, remember? You got full-on married to Ms. Wexler. What happened to that?”

Saul stood up suddenly and sputtered out a series of coughs and half-syllables. “Hey, go enjoy worshiping Jesus or Santa or Krampus or whoever, okay? I’ll call you if and when I need you.”

Huell left Saul standing there with his hands on his hips, looking down at his Bruno Marc loafers, his expression unreadable by Huell. On his way out, Huell gave Francesca a companionable nod. “In one of his moods today, huh?” he asked.

“You know it,” she said.

“You wanna come to the bar with us?”

Francesca smiled tightly and shook her head. “Thanks, but no. I’m going to my brother’s place. Gonna have dinner with him and his kids.” She gave the most genuine smile Huell had ever seen on her face. “I’ve got six nieces and nephews. They’re pretty great.”

“Nice. Big family, like mine back in Coushatta.”

“Yeah, Greg had so many kids, I figured I was under no obligation to produce any for my parents. Fine with me,” she laughed.

Huell stepped over to the polycarbonate window and reached out a hand to Francesca, who blushed a bit and reached hers through the tiny payment window. He took it, and gallantly bent down low to kiss it. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“And a happy new year,” she replied.

Huell sauntered out the door, whistling “Frosty the Snowman” as he went. 

In letting himself out, he had let another person in. The new arrival was a familiar bald gentleman with glasses, a mustache, and a goatee of sorts, and he now attempted to waltz into Saul’s office.

“Hey, buddy, hold on,” Francesca said. “It’s almost closing time, White. What gives?”

“I need to see Saul,” Walter White said. “I’d like to make sure all our business is in order before the holidays. I’ll be quite busy.”

Francesca offered Walt a skeptical look. “You’ll be… with your family, then? That so?”

“Of course I will!” Walt cried, puffing himself up, “and I don’t like your insinuations.”

Saul beckoned him into his office. “Hey, Walt. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Comfortable” was not a word that Saul necessarily associated with Walter White’s presence anymore. It hadn’t always been this way. Sure, Walt had, in technical terms, kidnapped him a year ago, but that was ancient history. For a long while, Saul had simply basked in his non-threatening presence, enjoying the money Walt raked in from his ever-changing methamphetamine enterprise. But ever since Walt had morphed into a stone cold killer — and gotten Saul to unwittingly become an accessory to child poisoning, to boot! — Saul had become a bit more wary of his star client.

Nevertheless, he was undeterred, he regularly told himself. The bottom line was that Walt was his highest-risk, but also highest-reward, client, and Saul vastly preferred to focus on the reward.

Walt sat and went over everything with him: the status of the car wash where Walt’s wife Skyler laundered his money, the distribution of all relevant funds, the upcoming meth cooks scheduled in the houses of unsuspected civilians who just wanted their houses fumigated for pests, and the possibility of loose ends from Walt’s prison murders of a few weeks ago.

“Any whispers of anything suspicious?” Walt asked. “I don’t think there are any more threats out there, but I have to make sure that none of those men have people coming to avenge them. Do your clients still talk about Heisenberg?”

“Not as much these days,” Saul said. “I think people think you’re dead, or captured, or maybe that Gus Fring was Heisenberg all along, and, well, now he’s kaput. I haven’t heard anyone saying anything about you, good or bad.”

Walt looked disappointed; Saul felt irked. “Hey! That’s good news, right? Keeping a low profile is a good thing!”

“Hmph,” Walt grunted. He had always seemed very concerned with getting credit for things over and above his own safety. Saul could understand wanting to claim credit for one’s accomplishments. But he felt compelled to remind the man that his situation was, at the moment, enviable.

“I’m just sayin’... count your blessings! There’s no one on your tail, your wife isn’t currently nailing her boss, and you’ve got money! A lot of it! Enough to pay for a new hooker every night, like me! What could be better than that?”

Walt shook his head and sat back, folding his arms and muttering “so crass.” He looked around the office, taking in the Constitution wallpaper and the styrofoam columns. And he commented, “To think that I ended up with you as a lawyer. I wanted to go somewhere else, you know. More reputable. Somewhere like, say, Hamlin Hamlin & McGill. But no, here I am with you.”

Saul felt his soul grow dark and blank. “That firm doesn’t exist anymore,” he said gruffly. If Walt had a functioning memory for personal details, he’d remember that Saul had once told him his last name used to be McGill, and might have asked him if Saul had any connection with HHM. But Walt glossed right over it. “Anyway,” Saul continued, “you really think a swanky place like that would be doing for you what I’m doing now? I think not, buster!”

Walt grimaced in reluctant submission to his point. Saul felt proud of himself. He could stand up to a murderer now. He was damn good at this job.

Saul stood up. “I think we’re done here, Walt. Have a very merry Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Walt said, putting his hands in his pockets and walking out without returning the greeting. Saul made a face at his retreating form. He really did become more and more of a prick every day.

But who cared about that? Walter White meant money, and Saul Goodman adored money. So by the transitive property, Saul Goodman adored Walter White. Indeed, he spoke to Walt more than he spoke to almost anyone these days, save Francesca.

Saul resumed his work with an improved opinion of himself, and in an even more acerbic temper than was usual with him.

Meanwhile the darkness thickened and a fine mist descended upon Albuquerque, which Saul could see out the front glass of his office building as he checked and responded to his emails. The parking lot stood empty, save for two cars: Francesca’s Nissan Versa and a certain Cadillac DeVille whose license plate conspicuously urged passersby to “LWYRUP.” Periodically, Saul would hear a car pass by, invariably with Christmas carols blasting from its speakers. Every time he heard warbling voices declaim in harmony that “a thrill of hope the weary world rejoices” or “the fire is so delightful” or something nonsensical about pretending a snowman was Parson Brown, he blew a raspberry at the offending car and clicked on his voice recorder.

“December 24th, 2009. New promotion idea: To all the misunderstood folks out there: you pay me for one felony defense, get a misdemeanor defense thrown in, at GET THIS, 30% off!” He was just as animated as though he were recording a real commercial at that moment.

Upon realizing that Francesca was now standing in his doorway, he turned off the recorder. “It’s a good idea, right? I haven’t done a promotion like that in at least three months. A felony-misdemeanor combo… good stuff, huh?

“Do you ever wonder,” Francesca mused, “if you’re responsible for causing a significant portion of Albuquerque’s crime, not just defending its criminals?”

He threw out his hands; he’d heard a similar accusation before, and had been equally resistant to it at the time. “Since when has more crime ever been a problem for a defense lawyer? Or for a defense lawyer’s receptionist? You should count your blessings.”

Francesca folded her arms and tapped her foot. “I’m about to take off.”

“Okeydokey.” He looked back at his laptop.

“There’s a food drive at my nieces’ elementary school for the new year. Any chance you want to throw in some donations?”

Saul looked up interestedly. “Ooh! Any chance they’ll do a writeup about it in the paper, and about how charitable the donors are, including a certain pillar of the community, the great philanthropist Saul Goodman?”

“I highly doubt it.”

He scoffed and returned to his emails. “Then just throw in an extra can of soup from yourself and consider it to be from me. I pay you, after all.”

“You’re just the epitome of generosity, aren’t you, Saul,” she says, glowering at him. “Selfless, is what you are.”

“Hey, I’m happy to do it, as long as it’s good for business. If not, what’s the point? I’m doing enough for the little guy over here already.”

“Yeah, lining your pockets with drug money.”

Saul gave a pointed look at Francesca’s own pocket. “And are you complaining about that, H.T.?”

In response, she only glared at him and said, with an eye-roll the circumference of the planet Jupiter, “Merry Christmas.”

“That’s not until tomorrow!” he reminded her. “You can save your pleasantries for then.”

“Um. You can not be serious. I’m not coming in tomorrow.”

Saul gaped at her, affronted. “So I’m supposed to, what, just pay you for doing no work?”

“Yup, that’s pretty much how federal holidays work, Saul. Every year.”

Saul rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. “Fine. But be in extra early the next day.”

“The next day is Saturday.”

“Ugh, fine. Monday, then. I don’t know why weekends even exist.”

She shook her head. “You really think people are gonna show up here on Christmas?”

“I guarantee it. You’ve seen how crazy this riffraff gets over the holidays. I promise you I’ll have at least four allegedly drunk drivers seeking my counsel in the morning.”

“Fine. See you Monday,” she said, and, slinging her purse more firmly over her shoulder, she began to head out the door. Saul closed his laptop and followed her out, locking up the office on his way.

“Still won’t let me follow you home, huh?” he asked.

He was replied to only with a contemptuous middle finger as she walked away. “Your loss, Sweet Cheeks!” he called, and Francesca got in her car, happy to be on her way to be with her family, rather than this cantankerous, deluded man.

Saul lived in what some might term a McMansion, and what others might whisper was yet another faint, tacky imitation of the home of the disgraced and deceased Howard Hamlin. Despite its excessive size, nobody lived in it but Saul, and nobody else ever slept in it besides an endless revolving door of high-priced prostitutes. 

The mist grew steadily more dismal as the occupant of the mansion approached its columned entranceway, dampening his thinning hair as he entered the code to turn off the alarm.

Saul Goodman consumed his melancholy Chinese takeout (and quite a copious amount of scotch) in his melancholy dining room, whose long, glinting dinner table had never been filled to capacity; and having browsed his police scanner for potential clients and beguiling the rest of the evening with pornography, he readied himself for bed. Many face creams were applied and supplements taken, and he took great care inspecting his combover, assuring himself that he saw a few new strands of hair since yesterday, and certainly hadn’t lost any.

At this point, he approached the toilet.

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the toilet in his opulent bathroom, except that it was very gold. It is also a fact that Saul had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that house; also that Saul was not given to fancies and hallucinations, not even during the time he had been lost in the desert with no hydration save his own urine. Let it also be borne in mind that Saul had not bestowed one thought upon Howard Hamlin since Walt’s brief mention of his five years’ dead employer that afternoon, in the form of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. And then let anyone explain to me, if they can, how it happened that Saul, while pulling his pants down, saw in the toilet — without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a watery bowl, but Howard’s face.

Howard Hamlin. The face was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Saul as Howard used to look, with a ghostly tie clip on his ghostly tie, which hung draped over the toilet seat. His hair was curiously stirred, as though by flushing or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and his ashen color, made Howard quite a ghoulish figure.

As Saul stared in petrified horror at this phenomenon, it was a toilet again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation which it had not felt since the death of Howard himself, would be untrue. But he stubbornly attributed it to an odd trick of the mind. He put his hand upon the waistband of his boxers, his pants having fallen to the floor, and determinedly resumed his activities. He did half-expect a pompously scandalized “ahem! pardon me!” to alight upon his ears as he did his business. But the toilet remained resolutely a toilet for the duration of his necessities, and he gave it a self-satisfied “hmph!” as he flushed it.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every pill bottle, every faux-Greek sculpture, every bottle in the bedroom bar appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own.

Saul told himself he was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He closed the bathroom door and retired to his bedroom, checking his texts as he went. There were already two lushes in the drunk tank that he looked forward to seeing the following day, regulars of his, of course, whose friends had contacted him. He made a cursory sweep of his room — no one behind the bar, no one in the closet, and no one under his rotating bed — and was satisfied. Nevertheless, he locked the door to his bedroom, which was not his custom, and put a chair underneath the door handle for good measure. Clad in his blue dragon-printed robe, he sat down upon the bed, preparing to press the button that would begin its soothing spins.

He looked up at the marble statue of Aphrodite near his bed, and found that its lovely face had been swallowed up by Howard’s.

“Whatever,” Saul said, speaking to the sculpture, after swallowing down a lump of fear. “You’re not real. Drank too much damn booze,” he murmured, and stood up, grabbing his cell phone. Perhaps he would call one of his go-to girls after all; he’d been planning to give them all the night off, but why? They were probably working tonight anyway, and what better way to work Christmas Eve than coming over to Saul Goodman’s palatial house with its luxurious amenities? He gave out breakfast bars in the morning! Nobody else did that. 

He stood up and attempted to scroll through the contacts on his phone, but he found that his phone was utterly lifeless, despite the fact that he had charged it that morning.

“Whatever,” he said again, and plugged in the charging cable — no response from the phone.

“Huh.” As he worked his jaw over this technological mystery, his glance happened to rest upon his clock radio, which inexplicably blinked 88:88. Well… a power outage must have occurred that afternoon. A power outage that had only affected certain portions of his room.

Just then, the clock radio began to play, and not his classic rock station, but KOAZ, a smooth jazz station far more appropriate to someone other than Saul Goodman. Someone like, say, Howard Hamlin. And when he ran to the door of his bedroom and pressed his ear to the door, he heard that every device in the house seemed to be playing the same station. It was a Bennie Green song that Saul felt was uncomfortably familiar, until realizing it had been playing in Howard’s car when Saul, ahem, borrowed it for some unsavory purposes five years previously.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The radios ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were using an excavator to unearth something that had been long hidden beneath concrete. 

He heard the doors in his house open successively, from the basement to the hallway outside his bedroom, coming straight towards his door.

“It’s not real, it’s not real!” Saul whined, wringing his hands and backing his way toward his bed. “I’m just plastered, like those losers sitting over in MDC cells right now, I’m just a drunk like them…”

His color changed, though, when, without a pause, his bedroom door burst open, sending the wedged chair flying. Saul shrank back, and a specter passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, his bedside lamp switched itself on, as though it cried, “I know him! It’s Howard’s Ghost!” and then turned off again.

The same face, the very same. Howard with his bleached hair, dapper Hamlindigo blue suit, smart cufflinks, and perfectly shined shoes. He looked just as he had the last time Saul had seen him alive, save for the fact that his body was (suitably for a ghost) see-through.

Howard paused next to the chair, which lay horizontal on the ground, and clicked his tongue. “Pity I can’t pick that up for you.” Then he sailed on toward Saul’s bed.

Saul, while terrified, was incredulous, and fought against his senses.

“What the hell is this?” said Saul, caustic and crass as ever. “Somebody’s pulling a really crappy prank on me, who is it?” He looked around as though some disgruntled former client might pop out and declare himself to be the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax. “What do you want with me?”

“Much!” the specter said cheerfully — Howard’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

Howard gave a challenging little quirk to his head. “Ask me who I was.”

“Who were you, then?” said Saul, raising his voice. “Someone pedantic, I’ll tell you that.”

Howard laughed. “In life, I was your boss, Howard Hamlin, partner to your brother at HHM.”

“Can you — can you sit? Like, in a chair?” asked Saul, looking doubtfully through the apparition’s body, but feeling like sitting might lend a bit of normalcy to the situation.

“In a manner of speaking. I can’t feel the chair, but I can do something that approximates the sitting experience.”

“Okay, yeah, do that, then.”

The ghost sat down in the chair that resided just outside the curtains of the bed, as if he were quite used to it. Saul now felt that he had the advantage, being still on his feet.

“You don’t think I’m real,” observed the ghost, nodding astutely.

“I… I don’t,” said Saul, willing himself to believe the words.

“What evidence must you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?”

Saul put his head in his hand, then raised it again. “I don’t know. Legal documents proving your ghostly status, probably.”

“Ah! Alas, they long ago ceased providing those in the afterlife.” Saul could not tell if Howard was being facetious or not, but before he could come to a conclusion, Howard asked, “Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Saul, “I drank a hell of a lot of booze and ate some sketchy Chinese food before I saw you. For all I know, the MSG’s catching up to me. You’re just a sodium-and-ethanol-induced fever dream.”

Howard nodded and crossed his leg jauntily. “Not to mention all the pills,” he said, helpfully. “So much Xanax. You really should take another look at the recommended dosage on that.”

The voice, and its omnipotence, disturbed the very marrow in Saul’s bones. Nevertheless he made every effort to behave as though he were under some delusion, that certainly nothing supernatural could be happening to him.

“Hey, uh, do you see this key fob?” Saul inquired, picking it up from his bedside table, wishing to divert the vision’s unwavering gaze from himself.

“I do!” replied the ghost.

“No you don’t!” cried Saul, with the air of a man who had just checkmated a worthy opponent. “No way, Jose. Because your eyes aren’t real, and you don’t have a brain anymore, because you’re…” He swallowed, perhaps feeling it uncouth to mention Howard’s untimely death, given his role in it.

Howard gave him a knowing smile, as though he knew exactly what Saul had been about to say, and why he had stopped. “But I see it,” he said, “notwithstanding.”

Saul felt suddenly weak in his bad knees, and gripped the edge of the bed for support. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, looking around for some means of egress, for the fear was beginning to overtake him. The door seemed to have shut and locked itself again, and he strongly suspected he would not be able to exit through it. 

“Why are you here, huh?” he asked. “What’s the point of this? To make me feel guilty?” He stood up straight, suddenly regaining some of his typical hubristic bravado. “Because Saul Goodman doesn’t do guilt, you know, I’m kinda past that. So, you can be here or not, I don’t care, whatever!”

“If you say so, Jimmy.” 

Saul was already upset, but at the mention of his former name, he became incensed. “Hey, that’s not my… Why do you…” Untroubled by his unfinished thoughts, the spirit casually turned his head, sipping a ghostly latte that had appeared out of thin air, the new angle allowing Saul to see the bullet hole in his head. 

Saul fell upon his knees and clasped his hands in front of his face.

“Just tell me what you want,” he pleaded, looking around hither and thither as though he could still catch sight of a prankster with a holographic projector of some sort. “Money? You want money?” I’ve got plenty of that.”

Howard let out a laugh that sounded rather like “huh, ho!” which would have been the kind of thing Saul would once have mocked, in his younger days as Jimmy McGill. It now pierced him to his core with fear, for there was a hollow echo around the syllables. “Ah, Jimmy. Always so unwilling to see what was right before your eyes. You really think I’m here for money?” He looked down at his translucent body and chuckled. “What use have I for money? You must see me for what I am: I’m a ghost! So. Do you believe in me or not?”

“I do,” said Saul, for he could see no way around it: there was no one else in the room. “Geez, I have to, don’t I? But why? Since when are ghosts real, and why would any of you come after me?”

“The consciences of certain people require,” the ghost returned, “that the spirit within them should do its best to better the world, and if that spirit fails to do so in life, it is condemned to do so after death, doomed to wander through the world and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.”

“Um… condemned?” Saul asked, for Howard’s countenance had grown dispirited, and his smile had frozen stiffly upon his face. “Why… condemned? You weren’t a bad guy, Howard.”

Now the laughter returned. “Says the man who felt justified in ruining my life, sullying my good name forever, and turning me over to the wolf at your door.”

“I never wanted that! Well, the last part, I mean! Jesus Christ, if I had known… Howard, you’ve gotta believe me, we never wanted that…”

“‘We,’” Howard repeated, quietly. “Ah yes. Kim.”

“You’re not gonna haunt her too, are you?” Saul said, leaping up in wild concern, forgetting momentarily that he was not still Jimmy McGill, and had vowed never to dwell on Kim Wexler.

“There’s no need,” said Howard, his coffee mug vanishing and his hands coming to rest on his crossed legs. “As far as I can tell, she’s haunting herself quite enough.”

“What do you mean? What’s she doing in Florida? Is she okay? You can’t dangle that in front of me like that and not tell me.”

“All in good time, Jimmy.”

“What does that mean? And I’m not Jimmy!”

Howard raised his eyebrows. “You once said I could still call you Jimmy. And so I shall.” Howard looked pensive for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Saul. “To return to your earlier observation — that I was ‘not a bad guy” — I suppose that an objective evaluation might come to that very conclusion. But posthumous judgment is not necessarily imposed from above or on high, but from within. It is quite different from the American legal system, I must say, and I can’t seem to argue my way out of it.”

“So you mean you kinda… did this to yourself?” Saul scratched his head. “Just let it go, Howard, just say ‘whatever’ and go on the great beyond. Nothing you ever did was so terribly bad that you shouldn’t be allowed to rest in peace, I mean, right?”

“Ah, Jimmy, we can’t all be like you. I’ve done my fair share of wrong, and I own it. Missed plenty of opportunities for goodness. You know I always wanted to start a scholarship at HHM, for example, but when did I finally gain the courage to do it? After both my father and your brother died, when they were the ones dissuading me from it. And then, when my conscience told me to vote for Kristy Esposito, as you advocated for, I was cowardly again, and voted for the candidate who was going to win anyway.”

Saul gulped. “You… remember her name?”

“Of course I do. As I said, we can’t all be like you, shoving everything down the memory hole. There are so many moments like that, Jimmy. Your little scam will never be justified, of course, but you had better believe that in the afterlife, I have dwelled sincerely upon my professional injustices toward Kim. My marriage was marked by failures on both Cheryl’s and my part, and I take full responsibility for those failures. I was, for example, never as attentive to her as I wanted to be. All this and more, not to mention the role I may or may not have played in Chuck’s death.”

Saul swelled up again, growing indignant and bold. “Hey, that’s right! You killed my brother!”

Howard cocked his head. “Did I? Really think about that, Jimmy. Think about what you did, and tell me it was all my fault.”

An image flashed through poor Saul’s head, of himself mock-crying in an insurance office, ensuring that his brother lost his malpractice insurance and thus any possibility of professional happiness. Saul attempted to put it out of his head posthaste. But a blow had been dealt to his resolve. He slumped down onto his bed, his head spinning. “Howard… do you still think we’re soulless?” he asked. “Me and Kim? Like you said before you…” He swallowed. “Before you died?”

“Ah, but that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Howard asked, looking professorially thoughtful. “With Kim, I have the answer already. Unencumbered by you, she does indeed appear to have a soul, albeit a stifled and unhappy one.” Saul began to stammer questions again, but the Ghost spoke over him. “You, however, are still a mystery to me. And that’s why I’m here tonight. I suspect that, perhaps, if I am able to unlock a dormant conscience within you, I may free myself of these earthly manacles and move… onward.” He straightened himself up and lifted his chin. “And I dearly hope to do so. There are a few matters I am anxious to sort out with my late father, who seems to have had no such scruples that caused him to remain earthbound.”

“Jeez,” Saul said weakly, still languishing on his bed. “Why’d it take you so long to think of this? You’ve been dead for five and a half years.”

Howard nodded. “Indeed I have,” he mused. “I spent far too long trying to right my own wrongs, when none can be righted by an insubstantial being. You’re my last hope, Jimmy. If this doesn’t work, I’m giving up. I’ll head back to my makeshift tomb, right next to Lalo Salamanca. Can you believe it? Buried next to my own murderer.”

Saul experienced a momentary sense of relief at the confirmation that Lalo was truly dead, before he had a terrible thought and bolted to a sitting position. “Oh, crap, Jesus, fuck, is he a ghost too?”

Howard chuckled. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

“I can’t. No. I refuse to believe that Lalo’s a ghost, because he would’ve showed up here by now. No. He’s gone, done with the world. Right?”

“Cleverly deduced,” Howard said, in a tone that suggested it was not clever at all.

“So… you’re buried with him.” Saul winced. “Um… where?” he asked. “Where’d Mike bury you?”

Howard tutted. “You haven’t earned the right to know that yet. Only prurient curiosity motivates you now. I need something more.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

Howard shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said.

“Wait… for what?” Saul said, sitting up, alert and adrenaline-fueled again. “Is there more shit that’s gonna happen tonight? Howard, if you’re lying about the whole Lalo-not-being-a-ghost thing, I swear to God, I’m gonna take back the stuff about you being a decent guy.”

Howard stood up now, and Saul thought that the color had faded even more from his already-pallid form. “Please, hear me!” he implored. “My allotted time with you is almost gone.”

“Until what happens?”

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I can’t say. I have sat, invisible, beside you many and many a day.”

This was not an agreeable idea, especially given the sexual proclivities to which Saul was given. He shivered, hoping Howard hadn’t observed some of his most recent escapades, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the ghost. “I am here tonight to advise you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope that is entirely of my procuring, Jimmy.”

Saul felt a renewed annoyance creeping in even through his fear, for Howard had always seemed to view himself as some sort of God hovering over Jimmy — over Saul, rather — holding his lawyerly fate as in his well-manicured hands. Well, Saul would have none of that. “Whatever,” he grumbled. “What’ve you got for me?”

“You will be haunted,” resumed the ghost, “by Three Spirits.”

Saul’s countenance took on the look of one with a gun pointed at his temple in the middle of the empty desert.

“Is that… how I’m supposed to… escape your fate, or whatever?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.

“It is. Without their visits,” said the ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. 

“I, uh… I think I’m good. I’ll take my chances with the afterlife, how ‘bout that?”

The ghost took no heed of this. “Expect the first visit this very night. I’d set an alarm for one a.m., if I were you.”

“Couldn’t I just get ‘em all over with at once, Howard?” hinted Saul, doing his best to avert his eyes from the ghost.

“Expect the second an hour after the first, and the third following the same pattern. For your own sake, remember everything we have discussed.”

When it had said these words, the specter checked its Seiko watch and readied itself to leave. Saul ventured to raise his eyes again. The apparition walked backward from him, and at every step it took, the full-length window cracked itself a little, so that when he reached it, it was wide open.

Howard beckoned to Saul to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Howard’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Saul stopped, not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, wailing inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. Among them, Saul feared that he could hear the mother of one Fred Whalen, long deceased, whose murderer was the same as Howard’s — a murderer whom Saul had helped to evade consequences.

Howard, after listening for a moment, gave Saul one final brusque nod, and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Saul hurried to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out… but there was nothing to be seen. The spirit voices faded together, and the night became as it was when he had driven home.

Saul closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was locked, the chair once again wedged under the handle. He tried to say “Whatever!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his conversation with the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; he went straight to bed, still in his silken robe, and fell asleep that very instant.