To get to the old neighborhood in Queens coming from Upstate New York, the best way is to go through The Bronx and then take The Throgs Neck Bridge, which leaves you right there. As long as when you get off the bridge, you take the Clearview Expressway. If instead you merge onto the Cross Island Parkway, you get dropped off elsewhere. Victor checked in with someone on his cell while they were on the bridge and realized he had to take a detour. Something demanded his immediate attention.
“Right now?” Bobby asked. “I just got out. I thought we were gonna build.”
“Bobby we’ve been building the whole way down.”
“We’re right here, though. Let’s go to the old neighborhood. You don’t wanna at least have a drink real quick?”
“Brother your lawyers didn’t get paid for by sitting around and having drinks. I gotta work real quick,” Victor said as he turned onto the Cross Island.
“What are you doing? Drop me off in the hood at least.”
“I’ll drop you at the apartment.” It was a few miles away. “Don’t you wanna relax for a second?”
“Relax? It’s only 5. The sun’s still out. You know the last time I was in the sun? When I wasn’t in the yard?”
“Bobby I gotta do this, don’t question it. You can see the sun on Francis Lewis.”
“Fuck Francis Lewis. Drop me in the hood, I’ll do some sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing?”
“Sightseeing, people-seeing. I’ve been gone 6 years.”
“Look, let me just drop you at the apartment, you gotta trust me. We’ll meet up later on.”
“Fuck later on,” Bobby said as Victor got off on Northern Boulevard going west, the first exit.
“Let me do the driving, Bobby. You might like this route better. You’ve been gone a long time.”
“I ain’t been gone that long. To forget my roots?”
Victor smiled.
“You think it’s funny?” Bobby asked. “You think this is funny?”
Victor did.
“Look, I don’t care you got a prostitute over there or something, it’s not funny.”
“Bobby, you’re roots haven’t forgotten you either.” He turned left off Northern Boulevard onto 215th Street and pulled up to the entrance of The Anchor Motor Inn, a nice, small, middle class hotel where 7 hoods, none of them Black or Asian were hanging out front. But to Bobby and Victor, they weren’t just hoods. They were Family. Their second Family. What was left of the old O.S.N. crew.
“What the fuck?”
“Why go to the old neighborhood when you can bring the old neighborhood to you?”
Bobby smiled. “Asshole. You’re an asshole.”
Victor smiled as well. “I love you, man.”
Bobby looked at him. “I love you too.”
And they got out of the car, treated like royalty.
YOU ARE READING
FOR BLOOD AND LOYALTY
General FictionIT'S 1999, Bobby Drakis is 26, and after 6 very long years inside state prison he's out on appeal and finally back home in Bayside, Queens, New York City- where his best friend Victor Saravano has become a wealthy and dangerous drug dealing loan sha...
