Thugs Bullied A Nurse & A Man With A Dog On The Train — Unaware He Was The Mafia Boss

Chapter 2

Nora Brennan was on her knees before she had time to think, and the wet floor was already soaking through the thin cloth over both knees. The coins had gone everywhere when the netted bag was yanked from the old woman’s lap — some spinning under the seats, some pinging off the metal ridge where two floor sections met, some vanishing into the long dark channel of runoff that ran the length of the car. She gathered them one by one, quickly, neatly, without a word, the same way she cleared a room after the work was done. She counted as she went because counting was muscle now. Eleven.

She rose, took the old woman’s hand, opened it, and placed the coins in the center of the palm, then closed the fingers around them. The woman — Ida Fernsby, though Nora did not know that then — said something so soft it was swallowed by the laughter behind them.

“Would you look at that,” a voice said. “The little angel of the eleven-forty.”

She did not look up. Four years in emergency rooms had taught her how to keep her gaze exactly where she put it, even when someone is trying to move it for her. But she listened. She heard the thin man laugh — that high, rushed bark, the sound of a laugh borrowed from the man beside him. She heard the big one say nothing at all, and she knew, from the small scrape of a boot rotating on rubber, that he had moved to a particular spot. She did not look at him. You never look at the quiet one’s face; you track his feet.

“Where do you work, angel?” the voice asked. It was not a question. It was a lever being fitted into place.