Read Online Gilded Edge, The by Danny Miller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Danny Miller
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illicitly smoking rooms, it was packed with writers, artists, models, musicians, film people and thrill seekers of every description, from well-heeled Chelseaites slumming to East End villains exploring fresh territories and letting their Brylcreemed hair down.
Detectives Kenny Block and Philly Jacket thought Vince was wasting his time, for Lightly was bound to have skipped Notting Hill, skipped London if not the country, and was probably back in the yards of Kingston. But Vince wasn’t so sure: sometimes hiding out in plain view was the best place of all. Lightly would feel safe in Notting Hill, and also his boss, Michael de Freitas, had the money and the muscle to protect him. Outside Notting Hill, Tyrell Lightly was just another ‘spade’, but in that de Freitas-run fiefdom – the City of Spades – Tyrell Lightly was if not himself the king, then certainly close enough to him to feel secure. So Vince decided to pay the king a visit.
But there was something else grabbing Vince’s attention in that area. He’d spotted it three days ago in a music store on the Bayswater Road, near Notting Hill Gate. The shop girl had taken it off the shelf for him, and shown him how to apply his curled bottom lip and puckered upper lip to the beak of the instrument. After some huffing and puffing, nothing came out, so she told him to relax. He relaxed, and pretended he was Bird, Art Pepper, Trane, Sonny Stitt . . . and out it came. Just the one note. But it was enough. He was hooked. He wanted more. In his mind’s eye he was already headlining at Ronnie Scott’s. For aesthetic reasons alone, the alto saxophone was a winner, so damn cool. Bold and brassy, it hung in front of you and curled upwards like a king cobra about to bite. It wasn’t cheap, but it was necessary. Learning an instrument was on his list of things he must do before he died; along with learning another language, and a slew of other things that tuned in and out depending on his mood. But the instrument and the language were two constants.
As Vince looked longingly at the alto sax in the window, the girl in the shop saw him and invited him to have another go. Vince explained that he was still just at the looking and longing stage, and needed more time to flirt with his potential new paramour. So he resisted going in, and just stood at the window ogling the shapely and brassy object of desire, until the girl put up the ‘closed’ sign.
Night was closing in as Vince made his way down the Portobello Road. The market stalls were being dismantled, wooden crates were being stacked, trestle tables were being folded and vans were being loaded; and all very loudly as the stallholders got in their last bits of banter to entertain the street and passing traffic. The light from the pubs and late night shops and restaurants and chippies kept the bustling centipede of the Portobello Road alive as, one by one, its multiple legs led off sideways to Colville Terrace, Elgin Crescent, Talbot Road, and then the turning Vince wanted, Cambridge Gardens.
At this end of Notting Hill, things got slow and slummy. The shops and the lights died out and it was now tall terraced houses in various states of disrepair and the new low-rise concrete council blocks that already looked as if they were in rehearsals for becoming urban blight. Next to a brightly painted corner shop that sold everything from booze to bath salts stood another shop. This one was painted black and had a heavy black curtain covering the window – it was about as inviting as a funeral director’s. The gold-letter writing on the window stated its intent: The Notting Hill Brothers & Sisters Letting Agency – Incorporating Your One Stop Community Shop. The letting agency/community shop stayed open till well past midnight, under the guise of serving as a local advice centre.
Vince had heard that this was Michael de Freitas’ HQ, and not the spieler in Powis Terrace as everyone thought. Downstairs, he ran his burgeoning
Detectives Kenny Block and Philly Jacket thought Vince was wasting his time, for Lightly was bound to have skipped Notting Hill, skipped London if not the country, and was probably back in the yards of Kingston. But Vince wasn’t so sure: sometimes hiding out in plain view was the best place of all. Lightly would feel safe in Notting Hill, and also his boss, Michael de Freitas, had the money and the muscle to protect him. Outside Notting Hill, Tyrell Lightly was just another ‘spade’, but in that de Freitas-run fiefdom – the City of Spades – Tyrell Lightly was if not himself the king, then certainly close enough to him to feel secure. So Vince decided to pay the king a visit.
But there was something else grabbing Vince’s attention in that area. He’d spotted it three days ago in a music store on the Bayswater Road, near Notting Hill Gate. The shop girl had taken it off the shelf for him, and shown him how to apply his curled bottom lip and puckered upper lip to the beak of the instrument. After some huffing and puffing, nothing came out, so she told him to relax. He relaxed, and pretended he was Bird, Art Pepper, Trane, Sonny Stitt . . . and out it came. Just the one note. But it was enough. He was hooked. He wanted more. In his mind’s eye he was already headlining at Ronnie Scott’s. For aesthetic reasons alone, the alto saxophone was a winner, so damn cool. Bold and brassy, it hung in front of you and curled upwards like a king cobra about to bite. It wasn’t cheap, but it was necessary. Learning an instrument was on his list of things he must do before he died; along with learning another language, and a slew of other things that tuned in and out depending on his mood. But the instrument and the language were two constants.
As Vince looked longingly at the alto sax in the window, the girl in the shop saw him and invited him to have another go. Vince explained that he was still just at the looking and longing stage, and needed more time to flirt with his potential new paramour. So he resisted going in, and just stood at the window ogling the shapely and brassy object of desire, until the girl put up the ‘closed’ sign.
Night was closing in as Vince made his way down the Portobello Road. The market stalls were being dismantled, wooden crates were being stacked, trestle tables were being folded and vans were being loaded; and all very loudly as the stallholders got in their last bits of banter to entertain the street and passing traffic. The light from the pubs and late night shops and restaurants and chippies kept the bustling centipede of the Portobello Road alive as, one by one, its multiple legs led off sideways to Colville Terrace, Elgin Crescent, Talbot Road, and then the turning Vince wanted, Cambridge Gardens.
At this end of Notting Hill, things got slow and slummy. The shops and the lights died out and it was now tall terraced houses in various states of disrepair and the new low-rise concrete council blocks that already looked as if they were in rehearsals for becoming urban blight. Next to a brightly painted corner shop that sold everything from booze to bath salts stood another shop. This one was painted black and had a heavy black curtain covering the window – it was about as inviting as a funeral director’s. The gold-letter writing on the window stated its intent: The Notting Hill Brothers & Sisters Letting Agency – Incorporating Your One Stop Community Shop. The letting agency/community shop stayed open till well past midnight, under the guise of serving as a local advice centre.
Vince had heard that this was Michael de Freitas’ HQ, and not the spieler in Powis Terrace as everyone thought. Downstairs, he ran his burgeoning
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