Angel Touch (19 page)

‘At least we could see if there's an Airborne motorbike parked outside. That would be a start.'

‘You think he'll leave his bike outside round here?'

I was winding him up some because I thought he deserved it. He'd probably never been to Brixton before – I could tell that from the way he was sinking down in the back of Armstrong the further along Effra Road we got. Mind you, I was a bit out of touch myself. In fact, I hadn't lived south of the river for nearly five years, and that had been further over in Southwark until a small matter of an exploding terrace house had persuaded me to go flat-hunting. Not that that little affair had anything to do with the riots on Brixton's Front Line. No, that was a purely personal piece of business.

So I didn't know the area like I should. But, as they say in the ads on the telly, I knew a man who did.

‘I've got an idea,' I yelled over my shoulder. ‘I've a friend lives near here in Jonson Road.' But he wasn't the sort to have actually read
The Alchemist
,
and probably thought his street was named after an American President.

‘What good does that do us?' Patterson moved onto the jump seat just behind mine. I think it made him feel more secure.

‘My man in Brixton knows everybody worth knowing and a sackful of those you wouldn't want your enemies to know. I think we should check in with him. It's just down here on the left.'

‘Well, okay,' said Patterson nervously. I knew Lloyd Allen was at home as soon as I turned into Jonson Road, because nobody else would have a pink (yes, pink) 1964 Ford Zephyr – the nearest the British ever got a car with fins – parked outside. Well, in Brixton they might, but only Lloyd would have had a tenor saxophone painted in gold on its bonnet. The year before, he'd been into the whole Absolute Beginners scene, and everything around him had to date from the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. Now he was into jazz, because he'd heard that the Yuppies had hijacked it after Clint Eastwood's film on Charlie Parker, and had moved back a decade to the late ‘40s. It was only a matter of time before my more traditional sort of jazz became popular again and I'd have to think of a new image.

I parked Armstrong in front of the Zephyr, reversing until the bumpers almost touched. A couple of black kids no more than about nine years old appeared from nowhere, hands in pockets, just sauntering by. They would be the official minders for the street.

They stopped and examined the half-inch gap between Armstrong and the pink Zephyr. I think they were impressed.

‘Lloyd in?' I asked, not expecting an answer.

I didn't get one. They just shrugged their shoulders. I opened the door for Patterson and then locked the cab up after he'd stepped gingerly onto the pavement.

Lloyd's house was a three-bedroom semi-detached in a street that about 60 years ago would have been classed as a greenfield development. The front door was open and at least two sorts of music were oozing out onto the street. I recognised some pirated recordings of Sade in cabaret coming from the upper floor and, louder, some mid-period John Coltrane from the living-room. I knocked on the open door and strode into the front room, trusting that Patterson was right behind me. He was. I could smell his after-shave.

The room had stripped pine flooring and white walls. All the lights were white golfball shapes on stands about four feet off the floor. The furniture was expensive wood and leather and probably Danish. There were two cases of Red Stripe lager in the middle of the floor, roughly a couple of thousand record covers in various piles, and about six people in the room. One of them stood up and took off his sunglasses.

‘Angel! Hey, my main man. Where've you been for the last six star signs?'

‘Hello, Lloyd, you cooking?'

‘I'm gettin' by, but you – you just disappeared off my screen, man. What's going down?'

Lloyd was wearing the bottom half of a pale grey pinstripe suit with turn-ups that probably took on board water when it rained. His braces were vivid blue and yellow zigzags, and were button fasteners not clips, worn over a see-through white shirt that didn't have a collar. He almost certainly had a pearl fedora to go with the image, and brown and white two-tone shoes, if he'd been wearing any.

‘Low profile, Lloyd, that's me.' We shook hands. Both of us were too old to ‘slap skin.' We left that to the teenyboppers with personal stereos and skateboards.

‘Man, I ain't heard you play since the days of the old Mimosa Club,' said Lloyd with a thoughtful expression.

In the past, I'd seen a fair bit of Lloyd. I'd played at a club in Soho, even backed a few rock bands Lloyd had claimed to manage, and he'd run a string of female mud wrestlers, mainly in the clip joint next door.

‘And are you still into mud – or is the record business paying off?'

‘I get by, Angel baby, I get by.' He grinned. ‘Meet the guys – and the next superstar I'm grooming.'

He put an arm around my shoulder and steered me to one of the leather sofas, which had a girl where other sofas have cushions. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt. Oh yes, and sunglasses.

‘Hi, Mr Angel,' she said, stretching her legs together just enough to produce static electricity.

‘Hello, Beeby,' I smiled.

‘You know each other?'

‘Mr Angel sort of put me on to you, Lloyd,' she purred. ‘And I've never looked back.'

The kid was going to make it.

‘Well that's just wicked, man, really wicked. Mr A, I'm in your debt.' Lloyd slapped my shoulder.

‘Good,' I said.

‘I thought so,' Lloyd said, grinning. ‘But first, meet the Dennison brothers.'

The three black guys didn't get up or anything – I was pretty sure two of them couldn't – they just nodded as Lloyd reeled off their names.

‘That's Derek, Selwyn and Melvin, and I know what you're thinking.' He prodded me playfully in the chest. ‘And you'd be right. Del, Sel and Mel. Would you credit it? Your ma had a weird sense of humour, boys.'

The boys took this all in good heart, as they probably had all their lives.

‘‘Nother coincidence,' I said. ‘Meet my mate Tel.'

‘Hey! Welcome! Del, Sel, Mel and now Tel. Beeby, get the
Guinness Book of Records
on the horn. Pull up a beer, you guys, and utilise the accommodation.'

Lloyd picked up a beer can, lifted Beeby's legs up with one hand, sat down on the sofa and let her legs fall across his lap.

I sat down on the cases of beer, and Patterson perched on the edge of an armchair.

‘Tel here works in the City,' I opened. ‘He's got a problem.'

‘I can relate to that, Angel my man. No decent food, no place to park and almost zero women. Good street prices for Jaws though, gotta admit that.'

‘Jaws –' I explained to Tel – ‘otherwise known as the Great White Powder. Very naughty substances.'

He made an O with his mouth. I turned back to Lloyd and tried not to look at Beeby's legs.

‘Tel's problem's a wee bit more specific than that. It involves a Brother, a local one. Thought you might know him.'

‘He got a name or am I psychic suddenly?'

‘Lewis Luther. Rides a Kawasaki 125. Know him?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Lives round the corner in Marlowe Road.'

‘So does my tailor.' Lloyd beamed, and a couple of the Dennison brothers laughed dutifully at the in-joke, which went over me.

‘If I were your tailor, so would I, but I wouldn't tell anyone.'

Beeby laughed at that until Lloyd lifted one of her legs and sank his teeth into her inner thigh until she squealed.

‘Know your place, woman!' shouted Lloyd, and Beeby wriggled more into his lap, laughing like a drain.

Patterson coughed to cover his embarrassment.

‘So what's this Loo-is been a-doing then, Mr A?'

‘That's what we want to ask him, Lloyd. It may be that Lewis doesn't know he's doing anything out of order, but some of the messages Lewis is delivering ain't getting through, or at least not in one piece.'

‘What sort of messages?' Lloyd ran his fingers up Beeby's
legs like a concert pianist warming up.

‘Mostly financial stuff.'

‘Any firm in particular?' Lloyd was concentrating on miming what looked to me like Mozart's ‘Turkish March'.

‘Tel's company.'

‘Which is?'

‘Prior, Keen, Baldwin,' Patterson said nervously.

Lloyd stopped tuning up Beeby's legs and looked up in genuine surprise and then disgust.

‘Shit! Has that little jerker Lewis been messing with my brokers? I'll kill him.'

 

If I was surprised to hear that Lloyd had a stockbroker, Patterson was dumbfounded. But a client is a client, and he perked up no end as we walked round to Marlowe Road, Lloyd between us and one of the Dennison boys about ten feet ahead acting as an outrider.

I'd been right about Lloyd's two-tone shoes, though I had I expected him to put socks on, and I was wrong about the hat – it was a white Panama. I was glad he chose to wear it, for otherwise, in his shirt-sleeves and braces walking between us, it could have been mistaken for an arrest or at least a ‘helping with enquiries,' and the last thing I wanted was a street riot.

By the time we were out of Jonson Road, Lloyd and Tel were getting on famously, talking ‘fundamentals,' ‘half-yearly growths' and ‘sell options.' The Dennison lad had pulled ahead of us and disappeared round a corner. He emerged giving Lloyd the thumbs-up sign, and Lloyd jerked his head without pausing in his conversation on the future of the British economy. Dennison crossed the road and disappeared again. He would be covering the back door of No 24 if I knew Lloyd.

The front door of No 24 was a yard back from the pavement. Lloyd didn't knock; in fact he didn't stop talking to Tel. He pulled a key from his trouser pocket and slipped lit into the lock.

‘You do know Lewis, then,' I said, looking at the key.

Lloyd pushed the door open and showed me his teeth. ‘‘Course I do. He's one of my tenants.'

‘This is your house?' asked Patterson, impressed.

‘One of ‘em,' said Lloyd modestly. I wondered if he had just the one broker. ‘This way, gentlemen. Ground-floor ap-art-ment if my memory serves me well. And we know he's home.'

I followed his gaze down the hallway to where a Kawasaki was parked on a spread-out copy of the
Evening Standard.
The number plate told me it was the same one I'd followed earlier.

Lloyd rapped his fist on a badly-stripped fake pine door with a metal numeral 1 nailed to it. Further down the corridor was a kitchen, and across it I could see young Dennison loitering with intent outside the window.

‘Looo-ees,' Lloyd cooed. ‘It's your friendly landlord. Social call.'

The door opened an inch and a yellow and brown eye looked out.

‘Do I lie?' said Lloyd, pushing the door.

Lewis Luther was about 19 in age years but a lot older in street-time. He backed across the room, keeping pieces of furniture between himself and the three of us. Not that there was much furniture in the room: a table, covered with copies of
Motor Cycle News,
two dining chairs, a bed with a duvet cover illustrating a big Honda bike, and a chest of drawers with a midi stereo cassette unit on it. The whole place had an odour of long-gone take-away curries and engine oil.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Allen?' said Lewis suspiciously, rubbing the palms of his hands down his red leathers. He'd lost the leather jacket and the boots, but maybe he slept in the trousers.

‘You happy in your work, Lewis?' Lloyd put a foot up on one of the chairs and flicked imaginary dust from the toecap with his fingertips.

‘Sure, Mr Allen. It's a good job. Regular pay.'

‘Your mum keeping well?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Still giving her housekeeping?'

‘Every week.'

‘Good boy.' Lloyd turned to me. ‘His ma's got six other Luthers and an Episcopalian church to support, but she's a good lady. Would break her heart to hear of Lewis in trouble.'

‘What trouble? I ain't done nuffink.' But he was looking worried.

‘That's for these gentlemen to decide.' Lloyd waved a hand, giving me the floor.

‘Who's they?'

‘We're financial advisers to Mr Allen,' I said, and Patterson nodded enthusiastically.

‘What's that to me?' Lewis spread his arms.

‘Your job with Airborne –'

‘Yeah, what about it?'

‘Do you always do pick-ups from Prior, Keen, Baldwin?'

‘What's that when it's at home?'