BCS 6.03: Nacho's Story

There's a lot of action in late season 5/early season 6 of Better Call Saul I've been skipping over. While Jimmy and Kim are doing their own things as lawyers and plotting together to embarrass Howard to force a quicker settlement to a class action case, there's been a turf war in the local drug cartel. Except it's not turf, per se, they're fighting for but power and influence. Lalo Salamanca and Gus Fring are trying to destroy each other, and their war keeps other regular characters like Mike and Nacho busy.

Nacho (Ignacio) Varga has been an interesting supporting character throughout the series. We meet him early in season 1, when Jimmy runs headlong into gang leader Tuco Salamanca. Nacho is smart and thoughtful, unlike many of the hot-headed Salamanca family members who run the gang. Nacho chafes at their leadership. Believing he'd be a better gang leader he plots to push them out. First he gets Tuco put in jail, then he causes Hector Salamanca to have a heart attack after secretly swapping his heart medication with a simple painkiller. Hector survives the heart attack but is mostly crippled and confined to a wheelchair, only able to communicate by tapping a bell with his finger. (This is the state in which we see Hector throughout the entirety of Breaking Bad. Now we know how he went from being a cartel capo to being a near-invalid in a nursing home!)



Despite all his plotting against various members of the cartel, Nacho rises through the ranks. By the end of season 5 he has a sit-down with cartel boss Don Eladio in Mexico. Eladio gives him his blessing to run things for the Salamanca branch of the cartel in the US.

It's hard to root for Nacho. He's a drug dealer and he's willing to murder people. But he's a thoughtful guy in a gang of psychopaths. And mostly he only murders people worse than him. So, yay? I do find myself rooting for him.

Alas, there's what I've dubbed the Star Wars Rogue One principle: a significant character in a prequel story who's not in the original pretty much has to die. I've remarked on this principle several times pondering how Kim Wexler, Jimmy's ride-or-die friend/girlfriend/wife would depart the story. It applies equally to Nacho Varga. He's nowhere in the Salamanca gang in Breaking Bad, so he's got to die in Better Call Saul.

The end for Nacho comes when Gus demands Nacho help kill Lalo. Gus has leverage over Nacho from having figured out he caused the stroke that paralyzed Hector. Nacho becomes Gus's mole in the Salamanca branch of the cartel because, if he doesn't, Gus will tell the Salamancas what Nacho did, and the Salamancas will kill him and his innocent father. Nacho doesn't have to shoot Lalo, though; he just has to use his position of trust with Lalo to unlock a door for a team of assassins to infiltrate the house where Lalo is staying.

Nacho does as asked, but the team of assassins fails. I swear, Lalo is the luckiest sumbitch alive. He bests a team of 5-6 assassins who have machine guns, body armor, and two-way radios. Nacho is on the run after the failed assassination. The whole Salamanca clan, plus their considerable network of allies, are looking for him.

Nacho begs Gus to get him out of Mexico, but Gus sets up Nacho to be captured. Gus can't be seen helping Nacho, as that would tip his involvement in trying to murder Lalo. But Nacho is shrewd enough to recognize Gus is hanging him out to dry— and also shrewd enough to realize that if the Salamancas capture him, they'll torture him and get the truth about Gus anyway. Nacho says as much to Gus and offers a deal: get me out of Mexico, and I'll say what you want me to say, then give me a clean death. Gus, impressed that someone matches his level of conniving, reluctantly agrees.



Things go a little bit sideways at the handover where Gus delivers a "captured" Nacho to cartel underboss Juan Bolsa and the Salamancas. Nacho has a script to follow, including staging an attack against Gus, at which point Gus's men will shoot him dead in apparent self defense.  Nacho goes off script, breaks free of his restraints, and puts a gun to Juan Bolsa's head (pic above). Mike, monitoring the situation through a scope on a sniper rifle from 100+ meters away, whispers, "Do it!" But Nacho realizes that killing Bolsa would leave broad suspicion that he's working for Gus. So, after taking sole responsibility for plotting against Lalo, and declaring his responsibility for causing Hector's crippling stroke, he kills himself. He was going to die either way, but this way he protects his family from retribution.

How Much Longer Until I Can Quit These Clowns?

You know your relationship with someone is bad when you find yourself doing the math to answer the question, How much longer until I can quit these clowns? In this case the clowns are my mortgage company, and "quit" means pay off my mortgage so I can be done with them.

I've noted before that I don't like my current mortgage company. My loan has been sold a few times, starting from the originator, whom I genuinely liked. Then it was sold from Originating Lender A to New Bank B. Bank B worked fine when everything could be automated but was a pain in the neck to deal with every single time the computers kicked out an exception that required human intervention. Now Scumbag Debt Collector C— yes, my new mortgage servicer is a scummy debt collector— pisses me off with every single communication they send me because, well, they're a debt collector. All their processes as they try to move into mortgage servicing still read like they're a debt collector, treating me like a deadbeat borrower who's fallen behind on payments.

The answer, BTW, is 6½ years. In another 6.5 years of steady monthly payments I'll have this loan paid off.

Could I be done with these clowns sooner? Oh hell yes! I could increase my monthly payments to retire the debt sooner. Hell, I could just write a check to pay off the balance. The whole balance. It's not that big anymore. I've been paying down the mortgage for 20+ years and have never taken cash out on refinancing.

Of course, just because the balance "is not that big" doesn't mean I have that kind of cash sitting around. I'd have sell a few things from my investment portfolio to pay it off. But the thing is, investments are investments. They earn money. And the cost of this mortgage— the financial cost— is small. I have a rate below 2.5%! It's financially a loss to sell assets that return way better than 2.5% APY to pay off a loan that costs less than 2.5% APR.

What would change that calculation? One thing is if the emotional cost of keeping the loan with these clowns becomes too expensive. The first time these clowns screw up in a way that's more than just passively irritating, I may just pay them off and be done with them.