Repo Men by Eric Garcia Read Free Book Online

first place, but that’s neither here nor there. Ninety days is grace beyond grace, and I didn’t hold pity for anyone who welshed on a loan with straight arrows like Kenton.
    The first two extractions were both livers, and they went smooth as, well, livers. The work was quick, cleanup unnecessary. But the third one was a stomach extraction, and I knew how messy they could get, so I brought along a few extra buckets, just in case: Two for the blood, one for the food remnants that were sure to be stuck inside the machine. The last thing I wanted was to muck up my nice repo apron with partially-digested cauliflower.
    According to the pink sheet given to me a day before the extraction, the guy had opted for a new Kenton ES/19, a moderate-size stomach artiforg with an expansion/contraction option which would regulate the food intake and, in so doing, the overall obesity of the client. The device could be easily recalibrated to a new volume setting by means of an external remote control which the ES/19 owner’s manual suggests be kept out of the reach of children and small pets at all times. It’s a swell little machine, top-notch all the way, and worth every penny. Still, it’s a lot of pennies.
    Pink sheet didn’t say whether or not the client’s natural stomach gave out or if it was an elective upgrade—usually it’s cancer with a stomach job, but the rumor mill is always abuzz with new tales of organ expiration, everything from solar radiation to overgrown Szechwan ulcers. Whatever the case, this guy had the Kenton ES/19 installed in January of the previous year, and then settled into a predictable pattern: Regular payment for one, maybe two months, dropping soon into sporadic bi-monthly cycles, quickly degenerating into check’s-in-the-mail promises. Calls were made, calls were not answered. Letters were sent, letters were returned unopened. Kenton gave him four months past grace ’cause he was some big muckety-muck over at the Tourism Ministry, but enough finally became enough and they called me in.
    “You do stomachs?” asked the field rep, a slim blonde with a slight body who had dressed down to make her repo calls. She had obviously done her work, and knew how the average Bio-Repo man liked his women: Tight shirt, flared pants, hair teased to the sky. “We got you on our liver sheets, but there’s one outstanding stomach job, might be tricky. I mean, if you do that sort of thing.”
    I gave my usual answer: “Everything but Ghost work. If the pay’s right.”
    The pay was right.
    Job started out as usual—scoped it, mapped it, gassed down the house, prepped the client—but here’s the thing: My scalpel wouldn’t dig. I planted, I swiped, I ripped into that flesh, but I couldn’t get much further than a centimeter or two down before I scraped against what felt like a solid plate of steel protecting his midsection. Impossible. I cut some more, taking no heed of the blood that had already soaked through the mattress beneath the client.
    After fifteen minutes, I had worked that body like a side of beef, flaying away nearly every ounce of flesh on that man’s torso, and still I couldn’t figure out how to reach that mechanical belly of his. Time was running out. But as my portable suction pump cleared away the pooling blood, I saw that my first guess, improbable as it was, had been correct: A metal plate barred my way, bolted into his body via attachments to his lower ribs and pelvis.
    Now, why would a man go through the hassle of having a lead sheet implanted across his torso? To protect his precious artiforg from repossession, I suppose. But, try as I may, I can’t see the purpose in this—the artiforg prolongs life, plain and simple. When your friendly neighborhood Bio-Repo man shows up on a doorstep to take an artiforg back to the supply house and suddenly finds himself stymied by a metal plate, he’s not going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again once he’s found he can’t get what he’s