Free Zipper Fall by Kate Pavelle Page A

gloved hands off, and made my exit the way I came.
    The next morning, my fence looked at the jewelry I brought in and smirked. “Looks like a good haul for one night,” he said.
    “Well? How much?”
    “Seven thousand,” he drawled, pushing his stringy brown hair behind his ear in a nervous gesture.
    “C’mon, Slavko. We both know gold’s at over fifteen hundred per ounce. This is all good stuff.”
    “Maybe so, but I have to make my profit, too. You can’t take it to a scrap dealer, not unless you want to give them your ID.”
    We haggled for a bit, and he upped his offer to eight grand, which I accepted with a grudging air but a grateful heart. I deposited half the cash in my bank account and put the other half in my emergency cubbyhole. I figured I’d use some of the cash for building my website. I used a lot of the money to place advertisements in a local business newspaper, and I spent only a bit less on targeted mailings to three hundred local, smaller companies. With a three percent response rate, I was hoping for nine or ten solid leads, which would typically result in two to four paying jobs.
     
     
    R EYNA couldn’t meet me for drinks on Saturday, as she managed to screw up some key paperwork for Mr. Pillory. She offered to stay until it was done right, and apparently she really applied herself to the task with great dedication, because she left me sipping my beer by my lonesome self. It frankly sucked. I was almost ready to go home when my phone roared in my pocket.
    “Hey, Wyatt! I got it done, but I’m totally bushed. He uses a different filing system from what I’m used to.”
    “You could have called for help,” I said, irritated at losing my drinking buddy to my former boss.
    “No way. I gotta learn how to do it right. He won’t accept anything less.” There was an odd note of dedication in my best friend’s voice.
    “So you like working for him?” I asked, nostalgic for the good old days of a steady paycheck.
    “Oh man. The difference is unimaginable. He’s so quiet. He hasn’t yelled once. He’ll just explain, and if I start to space out, he’ll just say ‘Ms. Guajillo’! You know? And he came in today and brought me pizza, since I was staying on a weekend.”
    I frowned. Pillory had never brought me lunch, and I stayed weekends every time I screwed something up, too.
    The next Monday, Pillory called to let me know he saw my ad in the paper and that it looked pretty good. “Nice website, Mr. Gaudens,” he said in his customary, formal tone. “By the way, I felt very bad about detaining your friend this weekend. As her boyfriend, you must have been very disappointed.”
    “Reyna doesn’t have a boyfriend,” I answered, the words spilling out automatically.
    “Oh? A girlfriend, then?”
    Shit. This was Reyna we were talking about. I really didn’t want to screw up her new job for her. There must have been a neutral way to say she broke up with Tim three months ago. I paused. “Reyna is unattached, as far as I know.”
    “Ah.” Somehow, Pillory must have heard what he wanted to hear, because his next words were infused with an unusual level of warmth. “I may have a client for you—new flower shop in Lawrenceville. The owners call it ‘The Stamens,’ which means absolutely nothing to your average customer.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Let me e-mail you their information. You may use my name.”
     
     
    O N W EDNESDAY , my landline rang. Not many people called my landline, and I had it only so I could hook up the fax machine. Expecting a telemarketer, I picked up. “WG Guerilla Marketing, may I help you?”
    I heard somebody breathe on the other side, and then he cleared his throat and said, “Is Gaudens there?”
    My arms broke out in goose bumps; the voice was unmistakable. “Speaking.”
    “I still have that marketing proposal you prepared over two weeks ago. Do you still do that kind of work?”
    Silence froze the line for an indeterminate amount of