Read Adrian Del Valle - Diego's Brooklyn Storyline:
Joe Barnes’ home is a 9X12 room on a quiet tree-lined street near Downtown Brooklyn. He borrowed $10,000 from the Irish Mob in “Hell’s Kitchen”, a lot of money in 1961. He still has all of the money he borrowed and believes he has hidden it well. The first payment is well over due. He’s late by three months and now they want it all back. That’s why he’s hiding out across the river with no plans of going back to Manhattan.In a two-room, first-floor flat, 14-year-old Diego lives with his handicapped mother. Money is hard to come by. A welfare check barely puts food on the table, so the boy hustles the streets to buy milk, bread, or anything else they need.He befriends Bill Jackson, an elderly black southerner from the Carolinas who lives one block over on Bergen Street with Beulah, his warm hearted, matronly wife. Diego shows the older man how to fish for spare change in the subway gratings of the Lexington Avenue line. To earn more money, they deliver groceries in a modified baby carriage.Though streetwise and school-smart, nothing prepares Diego for what lay ahead when the Irish mob finally finds Joe Barnes. And the cops are of no help either. One of their own wants that money, and he’s willing to kill for it.Pages of Adrian Del Valle - Diego's Brooklyn :
