Mercy Train Read Online Free PDF

the sidewalk until Violet intercepted it and sent it skidding out into the street.
    â€œThere he is,” he said. “Wait here.”
    Violet leaned against the wall of the post office on watch as Nino tussled in the adjoining alley with a boy who owed him money. She wanted to jump in and help, but she knew better. A policeman rounded Oak Street and she hopped up, whistling three times through her fingers.
    Nino stormed back out into the street, wiping blood from his nose with his palm.
    â€œLittle bastard,” he said, over his shoulder.
    Violet turned away from her friend’s battered face, secure in knowing that the other boy surely looked worse.
    She carried the cigar box as they walked.
    â€œYou get it from him?” she asked.
    â€œNah. It don’t matter, though. He won’t try it again.”
    He held one nostril shut with his fingers and shot bloody snot out onto the sidewalk at the feet of an old woman cradling her market basket.
    â€œChe schifo!” she yelled at him.
    â€œLo scorfano!” Nino hurled back, startling her with his Italian.
    The woman scooted away, looking back once to make sure Nino wasn’t following her. Violet laughed. She had stopped caring about disgusted looks and diminishing comments long ago.
    â€œWhat’d you call her?” she asked, handing him the box.
    â€œUgly. It’s a real ugly fish.”
    As they reached Chinatown, Violet thought this was what a foreign country must be like, the faces unfamiliar, the words indecipherable. She and Nino found the building and looked up at its crooked façade, a worn Star of David over the rusty front door left over from the old days. She had been here before in search of her mother, but it didn’t make her feel any more comfortable. Inside it was hot and close and, despite the hour, too dark to move about. They waited until their eyes adjusted before trying to find the stairs. The building’s residents were indentured to various brokers and smugglers, packed ten to an apartment, their narrow windows lined from the inside with newspaper in a cursory attempt to curtail Board of Health raids. From under the doors seeped smells of frying food and urine, of smoke and men. The building’s communal cat dragged a fish skeleton from floor to floor, his black fur bare in spots from hot grease.
    Violet reached down to rub the cat’s head, but it hissed at her and skulked away down the rank hallway. She and Nino climbed another flight of stairs.
    â€œIt stinks in here,” he said.
    â€œSo do you,” she said.
    He shoved her shoulder roughly and she knocked into a wall, something sticky against her sleeve.
    Madam Tang’s was on the fourth floor. For the initiated, a separate entrance with a chutelike staircase led straight from the street to another door. Violet knew better than to attempt access that way. She and Nino had to wait until Li emerged to set out milk for the cat. They sat and watched the door.
    A skinny Chinese boy slipped through the door and squatted with a saucer.
    â€œLi,” Nino whispered.
    Li squinted into the grim light and scrunched his nose, waving them away. They knew him from the docks. When the boy wasn’t at Madam Tang’s, he hawked the scraped-out tar from opium pipes to foreign sailors.
    â€œLet me in,” Violet said.
    â€œNo way,” Li said. “Scram.”
    â€œLeave the door unlatched or I’ll beat your face in,” Nino said.
    Li twitched in resignation and disappeared, leaving the door open a crack.
    Nino stood and clapped the cigar box at Violet like it was a mouth.
    â€œI got to get my papers,” he said.
    â€œOkay,” she said. “Go on.”
    â€œWe’re celebrating tonight. Jimmy’s back.”
    â€œWhere’d he go?”
    â€œJail. He got nicked trying to rob a police.”
    She knocked her head with her knuckle.
    â€œWe’re meeting up behind the tavern,” he said.
    Nino