Repo Men (24 page)

I don’t know if I was expecting a different kind of Bio-Repo man, or if I thought that the genteel ways of the South would have somehow affected the average working day. But it was gas, grab, and go, like anywhere else. Sure, there were more company barbecues, and the accents tickled my ears for a few months, but the Bio-Repo men down there didn’t strike me as any different from those back home. I didn’t make friends. A few of them had heard of me before; they stayed out of my way. The others weren’t interested in the newcomer.

That’s one thing I tried to tell Carol’s shrink, right off. “We don’t change,” I said to him on that first visit.

“Those of your profession?” he asked.

“Those of my gender,” I replied. “Hell, those of my
species
.”

She was a businesswoman, Carol was, and she bought and sold small companies more often than I changed my underwear. I would come back from a three-day repo stint out West to find, say, her gourmet foods storefront empty, the cheeses and patés all sold off, and Carol in the back room of another shop a hundred yards down the street, doing a thriving business in yarn manufacturing. I couldn’t keep up with the financial transactions, and one day, I asked her how she managed to flit from one career to the next.

“It’s all the same career,” she said to me, surprised that I’d asked the question. “I sell.”

“But you sell so many different things. Doesn’t that make it difficult to know the market?”

“Do you find it difficult to repossess a kidney and a spleen and a liver in the same night?” she asked, turning my question back at me.

“No, but that’s not the same. I’m taking things out.”

“So am I,” said Carol. “But in my case, it’s cash from their wallets. And I don’t need a scalpel for it; that’s why God gave me a tongue.”

I am 95 percent sure she meant that she talked customers out of their money. Ninety-nine on the good days.

Bonnie just finished up reading the manual for a Yoshimoto Pulmonary System. “Fascinating,” she said, laughing as she read the poorly translated directions to me in a poor Japanese accent. “In happy operating procedure, the breathing is like fresh air through the body. In unkind operating procedure, the fresh air is gone sad.”

Fresh air gone sad
is a beautiful way to describe the death process. Leave it up to the Japanese to make a poem out of everything.

Bonnie has just told me to put away the typewriter and go to bed, but I think she actually used the words “
come
to bed.” This time, I will not be quite so dumb. I will listen to the scream of instinct inside my head. I will go to Bonnie now, lay her down on a mattress of livers, and allow nature—at least, whatever remains of it—to take its course.

T
wo days have passed. Yesterday, there was no typing. Yesterday was a day for me and Bonnie, no tools allowed. We sat on our shelf and talked about ourselves, each other, the past. I can now say that I have only loved seven women in my life, including my mother, and I married each one of them, excluding my mother and Bonnie. It’s a good thing the list is modular.

As soon as we woke up in the morning after a night filled with carnal delights, we went at it again, two hungry kids just starting to figure out what it was all about. She told me a little more about her ex-husband, stories of how she’d made it on the streets all these years, undetected, tales of a life hunted by the Union.

And I told her about my own run from the cadre, about the way I’d managed to escape their nets, about my trip to the Mall, about my life since the day I gave up my job and went on the lam.

And, because to do otherwise wouldn’t be fair, I told her about Melinda. It was the only thing I’d kept to myself since going on the run, and it felt good to finally get it out, like releasing a breath I’d held in my chest for months.

It started with a discussion of my last days with the Union. She couldn’t understand why I’d been fired.

“Because I wouldn’t take the jobs anymore,” I explained.

“You wouldn’t, or you couldn’t?”

“Either. Both.”

“Why?” she asked, and that’s when I told her about the very last time I saw my third ex-wife.

My chest had all but healed from the implantation, and according to the digital readout welded onto my hip, the Jarvik–13 unit pumping away in my chest had two hundred more years of good, steady work in store for me. Frank had been pleased with my recovery, and after I worked my way back into full health, we returned to the easy give and take that we’d had before the accident. He cast jovial aspersions about my character; I made jokes about his mother. We got along fine, me and Frank.

The Jarvik payments were steep, a couple of thousand bucks a month, and with the mortgage on the house and rising fuel costs and food…Hell, I knew I sounded like the deadbeat clients I dealt with every day, but finally I was getting some idea of what they went through. Still, I managed to pay my bills, on time and in full, and kept my credit rating in the clear. That’s what you do, because, well, it’s what you do.

But I knew that I was only one or two jobs away from serious default, and should anything go wrong or take longer than expected, that I could be in serious trouble. Even a holdup of my commission at the Union paycheck offices could land my payment past the grace period, and the penalty charges could send me over the edge. I kept my wits about me, though, and the jobs went down like they should have. Quick, easy, painless.

Except for the tremble. On every job, to varying degrees, it would be there, hovering over me like a spirit, waiting to strike at any weak moment. I’d be sliding a scalpel through tissue or twisting a stubborn nut, and I’d feel it roll down my arm, a miniature quake whipping through my forearm, down my wrist, and into my hand. Even when it passed, it would still be present in my mind—when will it come again? Will it be worse the next time out?

One day, after I’d successfully brought down a ring of Outsiders who’d been scavenging Kenton accessories off our clients, Frank called me into his office.

“New job,” he said, “fresh off the line.”

The dossier cover was familiar to me. Purple with white stripes, a Gabelman job. I opened the folder, scanning the important stats on the pink sheet inside: Double kidney job, a full year delinquent, last seen downtown. Commission was three thousand on top of standard, which would keep me out of the hole for a few more months. I took it on the spot. The photo of the client was of a security-camera candid shot; they must have grabbed it from an ATM or stoplight video. It didn’t really matter one way or the other; once I got close enough, the scanner would give me all the information I’d need.

In the litany of almost-beens that make up my regrets in life, not taking a closer look at that pink sheet has got to rank in the top three. The other two deal with a forged lottery ticket and a girl from Bethesda, but that one little oversight will haunt me forever.

Jake saw me off. I was in the Union locker room, assembling my gear. Back then I had a leather carrying case that Carol had given to me; it had pouches made specifically for ether canisters, straps that held down scalpels. Custom-made by some fellow in Turkey. It smelled like cow urine, but it was the best bag I ever had.

“How’s the ticker?” he asked. “Keepin’ up to Greenwich time?”

Jake had personally recalibrated my Jarvik to good old U.S. measurements, but he liked to tease me about the original settings. “Workin’ great,” I told him. “Heading out for some kidneys. Any buzz your way?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve got a few local jobs, nothing big.”

Slinging the pack up and around, I prepared to hit the road. “Till tomorrow.” I held my thumb out, and Jake pressed it with his.

“Till tomorrow,” answered Jake.

The beauty of working downtown, at least for a Bio-Repo man, is that the straight, simple layout of the city allows for an easy taxi ride up and down the streets, scanner set on a relatively tight range in order to weed out the fool’s gold. I hit a few bum organs on Fillmore, scared a couple of old men to death when I pinged one kidney on each of them, but for the most part, it was smooth all the way, and I tipped the cabbie an extra fifty just for letting me sit and ride.

It was down near the south side of the city where I got the double set of pings. Two kidneys, Gabelman licensed, same manufacture date, within a foot of each other. This was the deadbeat I was looking for.

There wasn’t much in the way of modern business accommodations down here; the last fire had pretty much taken care of all re-gentrification efforts. But some of the local merchants had managed to scrabble together a few makeshift stores, fruit carts, junk stands. Languages with which I was unfamiliar flew at me from all directions, come-ons to buy their crap, harangues when I wouldn’t. All I had to do was flash the neck brand, and they shut up. Most of the time, I simply walked on by.

As I approached the general area where I’d first pinged the artiforgs, I steadily decreased the range of my scanner, localizing with every step. I carefully picked my way through downed rubble, hunks of concrete nobody’d yet bothered to haul off the streets. Ash and charred bricks surrounded me on all sides, a decrepit building abandoned and forgotten, trash to the careless, spooky to the ignorant, off-limits to all.
This is perfect
, I thought.
The kind of place I’d choose to hide out
.

Call me a prophet.

The Oceanic Plaza had fallen prey to two different fires, separated by five months of lag time. The first was electrical, a power-substation gaffe that got out of control and took out an entire wing of the six-building complex. The second was probably arson, an explosion that rocked the rest of the plaza into rubble. By that point, the corporation had cut its losses and vacated the area, and no one was left who cared to investigate. The Oceanic folks had a twenty-year lease on the property, but since there had been some questionable insurance dealings, it made more financial sense for them to take the money and run rather than reinvest in a dying property located in a well-past-dead area.

Now it was a wasteland, a rough circle of rubble five blocks in radius and 80 feet high, homeland to bums and stray cats and anyone on the lam. The glass was still there, too, heavy shards of it underfoot, most pieces already trampled into a fine powder. I got the feeling that for all of the
Off Limits
and
Do Not Enter
signs posted around the site, they generally sat unviewed, unused.

Rain had fallen hard on the city two days earlier, so it wasn’t difficult to locate a jumble of footprints in the muddy ground. A definite trail ran between the two gargantuan piles of debris, then split into a fork: One led to the rubble on the left, one to the rubble on the right. I stayed in the middle, scanner by my side, the green glow of the screen lighting my way.

For a while, there was nothing. I increased the range, searching out into the wilds of the city, and began to ping some ’forgs, but not the ones I was looking for. I was about to go back to the beginning and start all over again when I heard a
thunk
behind me. Hand firm on my hip, midway between my gun and a garrote, I turned, trying to stay in the shadows.

A bent, wizened old man, one leg a good six inches shorter than the other, picked his way through the debris, lifting rocks with a dexterity belying his age. I scanned him, but the old fella came up clean. Surprising, considering that over 90 percent of folks his age had some artificial part; the remaining 10 percent were either health freaks or too close to death for an artiforg to matter.

But as I stood there in the shadows, I found myself mesmerized by his strength. Heavy chunks of rock and mortar flew to the side as he lifted and tossed, exposing a small, dark cave within the plaza rubble. Gathering the rocks around him, he backed into the hole and began pulling the pieces into place, covering up his entranceway until it was indistinguishable from the mess surrounding it.

I aimed my scanner right where the hole used to be. Flicked it on with my right thumb. Ping. Two kidneys, right where I wanted ’em.

Bending at the knee (never at the waist), I squatted down to move one of those heavy slabs of rock. Tucked my fingers beneath the cragged edges, set my feet, and lifted. The stone flew into the air, landing fifteen feet behind me, the lack of anticipated counterweight nearly throwing me off balance. I tried another stone, and another, soon finding that the majority of rubble in this area was of the costume-prop variety, no heavier than a hunk of Styrofoam. Chuckling to myself—after twenty years on the job, this was a first for me—I opened up an entrance large enough to accommodate my frame and picked my way down into the remains of the Oceanic Plaza.

There were others down there with me. I could feel them shuffling by, hear them scurrying through the tight, cramped corridors. There were murmurs and gasps, and somewhere in the distance, a woman was singing. High, sweet, the echo drifting through the chaotic air. This was negative space, crude passageways hewn from within, rooms bare millimeters from collapse.

As I walked the underground city, the scanner’s glow kept me company, scaring off anyone else who might have thought of following me deep into the belly. Digits flew onto my screen from all sides, the scanner pinging back organ after organ, many with manufacture dates well over a decade ago. This was a hideout, to be sure, a nest of deadbeats unlike any I’d seen in the decades of my life’s work. I’d have to make out a full report upon returning to the Union offices.

The passageways grew smaller as I made my way farther inside, the bricks scratching at my arms, tearing at my clothes. Soon I was bent over, tucking my shoulders into my body, trying to become as small a package as possible. I’ve never been claustrophobic; it’s an undesirable trait in a Bio-Repo man, and one that can get you killed. But being down there, beneath thousands of tons of rubble I knew could collapse on me at any second, was as close as I ever came to worrying about my own death by suffocation. I realigned my mind to the task at hand and kept shuffling.

The scanner led me down a number of false corridors; though it was able to send its rays through most materials, I was still flesh and bone. So even if the kidneys I was looking for were just beyond the next wall, it didn’t help unless I could find an unfettered passageway. I had no urge to go breaking through bricks with my laser.

My shuffle became a hop, which soon became a crawl as the ceiling overhead lowered to a three-foot height. Now I was slinking through the corridors on my hands and knees, scanner tight in my right hand, Taser firm in my left, pack wrapped around my leg and dragging behind me, the ether canisters clanging against the rock beneath. I thought for a brief moment about turning back, about staking out the perimeter of the plaza, hoping that the deadbeat might make a run into the real world, but I knew that any client holed up this tight wouldn’t be emerging for a long time. I needed this job; I needed the commission. If I lost this one, the whole financial pile of cards would come down on my head harder than the pile of rubble above me.

Eventually, after my pants had worn through and I was crawling on bare, skinned knees, my palms raw and sore from the brick below, I got what I’d been looking for. Righteous pings from my scanner, dead shot ahead. Two kidneys, ready and waiting for me. Already thinking about the ride back home, the cash I would receive, the bills I could pay off, I picked up speed, fingering my Taser all the way.

Soon, I began to make out sounds. A conversation? No, there was only one voice. The closer I got, the more it coalesced, and suddenly, I wanted to slow down and speed up all at the same time. Wanted to get there to see if I was hearing it correctly, wanted to stay away in case I was right. And there it was, a low murmur trickling down the passageway ahead of me, coming from that cavern a hundred yards away. One voice, high, lilting, falling and rising. Singing.

I want to swim in the sea with the bears and the hummingbirds…

Melinda was on her back, splayed out flat against the rocks, staring up at the cavernous ceiling above her. I’d entered into what had once been the lobby of the western wing of the Oceanic Plaza, much of it still intact despite crashed support beams and crumbling walls. It was still extant, I guessed, due to the combined pressure of the destruction on all other sides, staying up like a giant teepee. I had no illusions about its safety, though; at any moment, this thing could collapse.

But that wasn’t foremost on my mind. Melinda, still singing, unaware that I’d entered the room 50 feet away, was all I could think about. It was her, no doubt. Fifteen years since I’d last seen her, but she’d aged at least thirty. The once-taut skin on her full, wide face sagged beneath her atrophied cheeks, pulling down the thick, caterpillar pouches beneath her sunken eyes. Her hair, once full and rich, swirling about her head in a corona that made shampoo models jealous, was limp and dead, chopped off in a ragged pageboy, the ends uneven, splitting even at their short length. Old, worn jeans, frayed at the edges, enveloped her legs, and I barely recognized the pink blouse as the one she used to wear around the house when she was feeling randy. The buttons had all but fallen off, and great holes had been torn in the side, her sickly yellow flesh poking through.