Pure Bronx by Mark Naison

Author:Mark Naison [Naison, Mark; Castillo-Garsow, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935883449
Publisher: Augustus Publishing

CHAPTER 25

Less then ten minutes later, the two found themselves silently watching the buildings pass as the car crawled through streets packed with buses, trucks and pedestrians until the driver reached the Bruckner Expressway and turned left under the highway. Since many families lived doubled and tripled up in the South Bronx’s apartment buildings traffic could be worse than in Manhattan. The one exception was Hunts Point, where the garages, warehouses and body shops outnumbered the buildings. The car finally began moving quickly when it turned onto Hunts Point Avenue, reaching Juno’s garage in less than five minutes.

Khalil and Doo walked through the entrance and headed into Juno’s office, where Juno sat amidst a clutter of papers, auto parts and pinup photos, from English and Spanish magazines. Juno’s Garafuna community migrated to the Bronx from a predominantly Black region of Honduras that had a different music and culture from the rest of that country. Like many Bronx residents, he looked Black, but spoke Spanish. And like many other Bronx residents, he had seen things in his home country that had scarred him for life and had given him a look on his face that said to anyone with even a bit of street smarts, “Don’t fuck with me!”

Juno directed Khalil and Doo to sit on two chairs on the other side of his desk and then looked them over carefully, a shrewd expression on his face.

“So, mis amigos, what do you have for me? What’s so important that you have to rush to see me in the middle of the day?”

“How would you like to make two millions dollars?” Khalil asked, getting right to the point.

“Hah, hah, that’s funny. You two jump up and down when I give you two thousand dollars. Where are you going to find millions? This is the South Bronx, not Wall Street.”

“You’re right, Juno, but sometimes, Wall Street comes to the South Bronx.”

Juno sat back in his chair, intrigued. “Bueno, dimelo.”

“I happen to know for a fact that Robert Seidman, a Wall Street investor worth hundreds of millions of dollars is a regular at Cheetah’s, the big strip club just off the Grand Concourse. We’re going to kidnap him for ransom.”

Juno laughed, almost choking. “How the fuck you gonna do that?”

Khalil looked over at Doo, who nodded. Meeting Juno’s gaze, he said confidently, “This old white motherfucker is crazy for the Black skin. We got an inside girl there he goes to see three, four times a week. She can’t stand him, so she’s been putting off seeing him, but next week she is going to agree to give him an hour in a private room.” As Khalil continued, he felt an odd mixture of rage and excitement pounding though his chest. “While he’s in there busting a nut, she’s going to spike his drink, and when he’s out, she’ll signal us and we’ll come in the back door, take him to a private place and hold him for ransom.”

“And where do I come in?” Juno said, his face still blank and expressionless.

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