I can recall thinking something was a little off in the conversation in which Mike is discussing the hazard pay he sets aside for his guys, after Fring is dead and Gus, Lydia, Walter & Jesse were using the pest company as cover in Breaking Bad season 5. This happens as they are splitting up the first take..
Mike: ..Legacy cost, $351,000. That's 117,000 each.
Walter: "Legacy cost"?
Mike: I got nine guys. You don't know them, but they were part of the previous operation and they know a lot. And right now, some of them are in jail and more will be soon. The feds RICO-ed their hazard pay. So we are gonna make them whole.
Walter: We are gonna make them whole? What is this "we"? These were Gus' employees, not ours.
Mike: They might have been Gus' employees, but they're my guys.
Walter: So, what are they doing to further our interests?
Mike: The cops are looking at them very closely. We don't want them furthering our interests.
Walter: So we are paying them, why?
Mike: Because it's what you do.
Walter: It's what you do.
Mike: My guys are keeping their mouths shut. We make them whole. One hand washes the other. It's as simple as that.
Walter: It sounds like a simple shakedown simple as that. We're paying for their silence. That's blackmail.
Mike: Business is my end. This is business. End of story.
Walter: This is your problem. It should come out of your end.
Jesse: Hey. Hey. Just take it out of mine..
From Hazard Pay: subtitles
Then I realized what was astray.. about the time Mike says:
Because it's what you do.
I somehow, in the back of my mind, expected him to say..
Because it's what you do. Especially when they wouldn't even be in jail if it hadn't been for a bomb in a nursing home, followed by a smoking pit of a meth lab in one of Fring's laundries just hours later, ..Walter.
So that leads to my inquiry..
Presuming Walt/Jesse were able to do/did the following:
- Kill Fring using Ricin in a way that appeared to be a natural death.
- (Not have Jesse trapped in the lab, guarded over by a belligerent looking thug.)
- Just walk away from the (well hidden) meth. lab (and not kill the last two guys that Walter killed there).
If it had gone that way, would any of the wrong doings of Fring have come to light, resulting in the loss of the nest eggs and freedom of Mike's guys?