on her breath, mixed with the stench of way too much perfume, sweat, and sex.
“Look,” I said, trying to keep myself as calm as possible. Remembering that I was talking to a child, more or less. “I’m here to do a job, that’s all. Just like you. I’ve got paperwork and a boss and mouths to feed at home. That man on the floor is your client, I get that, but he’s my client, too, and it’s not my fault if he decided to start paying for blow jobs and stop paying his bills. So let’s all be adults about this and let everyone get on with his business, yeah?”
She nodded—I expect she would have agreed to nearly anything I suggested at that point—and I let her go, kneeling back down by Smythe to continue my work. I wanted to get the job done before the effects of the Taser wore off; it’s always such a mess to zap someone once they’ve already been opened up. The blood splatter is hell on a good cotton shirt.
I was wrist-deep in viscera when the hooker came at me again. I don’t know if she’d already forgotten our little chat or chosen to ignore it, but she screamed and ran straight for me, purse swinging over her head like some crazed Viking in drag. With my free hand I pulled the Taser and shot my remaining dart; it hit her in the leg, giving her just enough time to glance down at it in confusion before 50,000 volts took over.
She dropped, I finished up, and dropped the Kenton LS–400 liver I came for into the stainless-steel sink in Henry Smythe’s kitchen. His high-pressure faucet nozzle did just the trick washing off the blood and attached tissue, and before long the metallic organ was gleaming in the glow from the overhead halogens.
I filled out a yellow receipt, signed it in triplicate, and left a copy on Mr. Smythe’s body. If his next of kin had any issues with the repo or its aftermath, there were numbers they could call. Funny enough, no one ever bothered. Just goes to show, I guess, that the system works, in its own way.
Ran out two more jobs that same night, then hightailed it back to the Mall and the Credit Union offices, where Frank was waiting for me. I’m sure he’s got a lovely home, and occasionally I’ll hear stories of vacations he’s been on, but somehow Frank’s always at the office. Like he’s got a double taking his place when he goes home for a nap.
“Easy jobs?” he asked.
“Same as ever,” I replied. We headed to the back room, where he took the artiforgs—the liver from Smythe, a set of kidneys from a bookkeeper, and a pancreatic unit that was only three months away from payment in full—and punched them into the system. From there, they’d be shipped back to the refurbishment plants of their respective manufacturers, where they’d be checked out for defects, spit-shined to a like-new gleam, and put back out on the showroom floor for the salesmen to hawk to new, hopefully more solvent, clients. For a small percentage, of course, there would come the inevitable delayed payments, the late-payment penalties, the increased interest rates, and finally default. Then they’d call me in and the circle of life would start all over again.
As I got ready to leave and go back home to Carol, flush with cash and the dwindling rush from the jobs themselves, Frank held another pink sheet up. “Priority job,” he said. “Over a year past due.”
“I’m tired,” I told him. “The sun’s coming up. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Double commission you get it done today,” he said. “It’s just a couple miles from here. Come on. It’ll take, what, an hour?”
I took the gig. I nearly always took the gig. That’s one of the things that made me so good at what I did—I didn’t have much of a social life. When you’re pulling out artificial organs for a living, dinner plans can really get in the way.
But all of that—the nights of work, the days asleep, the position of power and the bravado—it’s a million years from where I am now. It’s a past life, one that bears as much resemblance to my current state as would a career playing polo or managing stock portfolios.
Let it be known: Once, I owned the night. The right to go to the front of the line. To tell policemen to fuck off and