Better Call Saul, Season 1

[Mike admits the truth about his late son, Matty, to his wife]

Mike:
You let some things slide and you look the other way. You bust a drug dealer that has more cash than you'll ever earn in a lifetime. Some of it doesn't make it back into evidence, so what? You took a taste. So did everyone else. That's how you knew you were safe. It's like killing Caesar. Everyone's guilty. Matt wasn't dirty. I was. Everyone was in that precinct. That's how it worked. You turn in your buddy, you're screwing yourself. You go along to get along.

Stacey:
And you went along.

Mike:
[chuckles; clicks tongue] I did. Yeah. I did.

Stacey:
Okay. But you said Matt didn't.

Mike:
No. Not Matt. Fensky got to Hoffman early, kickbacks from some gang or another. Protection, basically. And Hoffman went to Matty and offered to cut him in. Only fair, right? They were partners. And Matt did what you would think: He agonized. And then he came to me, wanted to go to the I.A., do the right thing, shut 'em down.

Stacey:
Oh, my God. And you let him? That's why he got killed 'cause he was gonna turn on those guys?

Mike:
No. No. I told him...[sighs] "You know what a cop fears most? More than getting shot, more than anything? Prison. Getting locked up with everybody you put away. You threaten a cop with that, you make him dangerous." And that's what I told him. I talked sense. No one was getting hurt. "But if you go to the I.A., if you even look like you're going...?" He had a wife, a kid, responsibilities. "Take the money. Do something good with it." [chuckles] Well, I tried. I tried. But he wouldn't listen. My boy was stubborn. My boy was strong. And he was gonna get himself killed. So I told him...I told him I did it, too, that I was like Hoffman, getting by, and that's what you heard that night: Me talking him down, him kicking and screaming until the fight went out of him. He put me up on a pedestal. And I had to show him that I was down in the gutter with the rest of them. Broke my boy. I broke my boy. He went to Hoffman, he took the money, but he hesitated. Even looking like you're doing the right thing to those two meant that he wasn't solid – that he couldn't be trusted. I got Matty to take the money. And they killed him two days later. He was the strongest person that I ever knew. He'd have never done it, not even to save himself. I was the only one, I was the only one that could get him to debase himself like that. And it was for nothing. I made him lesser. I made him like me. And the bastards killed him anyway.

Stacey:
Hoffman and Fensky, if they killed Matty... who killed them? Pop... What happened?

Mike:
You know what happened. The question is... Can you live with it?