Free Repo Men by Eric Garcia Page A

upon to drag a pet into any credit department. Loan officers were not impressed with man’s best friend. “He needs a lung.”
    “Who does?” I asked.
    “Muffin.” He nodded down to the dog, and the thing stared up at me pathetically, big brown eyes rolled back in its head. “Yes, that’s right,” the man cooed to his ball of fur. “We’re gonna get you a biddie widdle lung.”
    “What’s that cost?” I asked. I’d heard of people getting artiforgs for their pets, but that was mostly celebrities who could afford to fund in cold, hard cash.
    The man shook his head, saying, “I don’t know yet. The vet told me he could set up a payment plan at eighteen hundred a month, but I thought I’d get a second bid.”
    “Good luck,” I told him, then turned back to my place in line. Good luck, indeed. No union or supply house is going to extend credit to a guy who’s only got his goddamned dog to lose.
    The linchpin of the artiforg credit system is that all equity rides within the body itself. That way, when it comes time to foreclose, there’s no way for the client to cut and run.
     

    “Box on the belt, sir.” The X-ray tech motioned for me to drop my package on the conveyor, and I gladly did so. Taking a step through the metal detector—the Mauser still hidden beneath that shrub outside—I came up clean and reached for my package on the other side.
    My hand was grabbed, held. “What’s in the box, sir?” A new guard, this one outfitted with a gun of his own. There were no external markings on his uniform to distinguish him from the woman still sitting on her butt five feet away, but I had a feeling he’d been trained to use that revolver with some degree of competence.
    “A birthday gift,” I explained. “For my credit advisor.” This was commonplace, in fact, and not in the least out of the ordinary. In order to secure a line of credit or more favorable interest rates, customers often brought lavish bribes to their advisors, disguising them as birthday and holiday presents so as not to alarm the higher-ups. Of course, everyone knew it was going on, and everyone tolerated it, because the advisors would throw some of that booty up to their supervisors, who would, in turn, toss a few crumbs to their own managers. The series of kickbacks was endless, a thick layer of grease facilitating the slide up and down the pyramid. It was like Amway, only not quite as cutthroat.
    “It’s not showing up on the screen,” he said, frowning at the display. “You’ll have to open the box.”
    “It’s leaded crystal,” I patiently explained. “That’s why you can’t see through it. Look, it’s very tightly wrapped, and if I try to—”
    “Open the box, sir, or we’ll do it for you.”
    I made a big show out of snatching the box from the guard’s hands—the proper amount of insolence for a potential customer who feels he’s getting the shaft—then set to opening the thing, carefully untying the very complicated knots I myself had made not thirty minutes before.
    A minute passed, two, and the line of sycophants behind me, still stopped up, waiting for me to be given the go-ahead or be dragged out screaming bloody murder, began to murmur and mumble among themselves. Three minutes, four, and now there was audible dissent, snippets of criticism being hurled at me, at the guards, at the Mall in general.
    “Get it open already,” threatened the guard, one hand already moving toward that gun.
    “You gonna shoot me over a box?” I asked incredulously. Behind me, the other customers were shying away, wishing to remain clear of blood and shattered crystal.
    But he bypassed the weapon and came up with a pocketknife. Snatching the “gift” back from me, he tore into the ribbon with a vengeance.
    The empty vase tumbled out and onto the stopped conveyor belt with a heavy thunk , setting off a palpable release of tension within the line. The guard stared down at the hunk of crystal for but a moment—long enough