Raildogs

by Rejean Giguere

  Vicious kicks and punches came quick and hard, the two men were easily overcome, soon lying on the ground as the kicks kept coming. The gang began yelling, “Raildogs rule.”

  Bart turned away. He couldn’t believe the bastards were still kicking the guys on the ground. Danny was glued to the scene. He watched mesmerized, fear and adrenaline pounding through his veins.

  This was real? Who did this stuff? Why? Bart hadn’t expected to see anything like that. Suddenly it dawned on him. It could have been them. He noticed that Danny didn’t take his eyes off the group until he was sure they’d moved on.

  His heart was beating against his ribs like a jackhammer. He watched Danny turn towards him, “What the fuck are Raildogs?”

  *****

  Cliffy and part of his crew were eastbound on the northern line of the box heading for Cheyenne. He sat with his back against the wall thinking about his bones. They were hurting more and more with each passing year, pounded by the rough ride.

  He used to ride these lines like they were nothing. He could stand for hours and the swaying and rattling wouldn’t bother him at all. Now he felt it. The wear and tear was adding up.

  He felt alive though. The crew was amped up and ready for trouble, he was easily reminded of the pro’s that came with the job. His phone vibrated, it could only be someone in the gang. “One.”

  “Five. Thought you should know.” There was a pause and Cliffy got a sinking feeling in his gut. “Ninety-two was tortured near Pocatello, up in Idaho.”

  “What do you mean tortured?”

  “Blow torch it seems. I heard it was really bad. We were suppose to meet him today, we were heading down the line.”

  Cliff didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. No one fucked with the gang. Then he remembered that a few guys had recently disappeared or gone missing. No dues had been paid. No warning, or heads up. Everyone assumed that they wanted to quit and simply walked away. It happened. Sometimes one of them would get picked up by the cops for something else they’d done. No one thought anything of it. Cliff suddenly had doubts.

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “I’m leaving some of the guys here in Pocatello to find out more and try and locate the asshole. Right now I’m catching a train back north to rustle up the rest of my guys and we’re all coming back here. Should be back tomorrow. Hopefully we get the bastard.”

  Cliff liked the plan, leave some guys on the ground to keep the attacker there, bring in more men to flush him out if the first group couldn’t find him.

  “Let me know what happens.”

  He didn’t like uncertainty, preferring things in order. Was this a one-off? Had the guy brought it on himself? He opened up his little black book. It helped him keep tabs on his own crew, but also listed the other bosses and their crews as well. Ninety-two had only been with them six months, so maybe he had a past that was catching up. He was also the newest member and unsure of his place, therefore he could be the weakest.

  Either way, the guy was gone so it didn’t matter. For some reason Cliff’s bones were suddenly aching more. He put the phone away and leaned against the wall, trying to ease the kinks out of his back.

  *****

  Colton, California

  Bill Dewton was trying to show respect by not hurrying his witness. He sat in the living room attempting to interview his daughter’s friend while her mother played chaperone. He needed to take it slow, despite his impatience to get at the answers.

  “I know it’s terrible to bring it back up and make you live through it all again. I was hoping you would understand how I feel with her still being missing,” He wasn’t above adding a little guilt to the situation if it got things moving.

  “No I want to help. She’s my best friend.” The poor thing looked like she was trying to stick on a brave face. It wasn’t working – her bottom lip quivered.

  Okay, Bill knew he had to get this right.

  “Look, instead of me asking questions that you might not like. Why don’t you tell me your story and I’ll ask about that as you go along.” He knew that approach made people feel less worried about what might be asked and made them feel comfortable.

  “Well. We lied. I’m sorry.” She looked at her mother and back to Bill. “We learned people caught free rides on the freight trains and thought it would be fun. We knew you guys wouldn’t let us go to New York.

  “We caught a train in the yard here in town and made it all the way to Vegas.” The girl stalled a moment, “Or at least that’s what we thought. These guys came out of nowhere and jumped into out boxcar. We knew we were in trouble right away. They were cheering and whistling.”

  This was all new stuff. The vein on Bill’s forehead bulged slightly. He took a deep breath and forced the anger back down. All he’d been told previously was that something happened on the train and this girl had jumped off, while his daughter stayed on. The implications of this new information were overwhelming. He noticed the tears on the girl’s face and managed to stay quiet. Blinking, he motioned her to continue.

  “The train started going again and these guys seemed to be waiting for something, like they were going to do something but not yet,” she explained. “Four of them had Trish in the corner and were grabbing at her and touching her, there were only two left watching me.”

  The girl looked up and her tears were running freely. “I’m sorry, but I had to get out of there. The ones near me were watching what was going on in the corner because Trish was screaming, so I ran for the open door. It turned out we were on a hill and I fell twenty feet or so before landing on some rocks.”

  Her mother jumped into the conversation, putting her arm around her daughter, “She’s lucky to be alive. She wasn’t found until she crawled out herself. It took her two days.”

  Bill felt bad for her, but not as bad as he felt as for his daughter. “We can thank God for that. I won’t ask too many more questions. And again, I’m sorry to bother you, but was there anything you remember that was different about those guys?”

  “I’ve gone over it again and again. I feel so guilty for leaving her,” she met Bill’s eye. “I could only see the two guys that were watching me. I was worried they had guns or knives, or something. I did see that they had numbers tattooed on their right wrists. I don’t know if that helps.”

  Neither did Bill, but it was the first real lead he had. He held his face still, trying not to betray any excitement. “Where on the wrist? What kind of number?”

  “It was on the inside of the wrist, about two inches big,” she held her fingers apart. “They were hard to read, but one guy’s looked like a seventy, and I think the other might have been eighty-one.”

  A few questions later it was obvious there was nothing else. Her mother was clearly getting agitated. Bill knew when to quit. He wished them peace and thanked them for their help.

  Driving back to the office he knew he finally had something. Tattoos usually meant gangs. Was this a gang? What were the numbers? The sooner he added this information to the search criteria and attached it to the messages he had out to other detachments, the better.

  He stayed focused on the tattoos, but inside his heart was crumbling. He knew now that she was gone. Unless they planned to keep her permanently, they would have gotten rid of her by now. Since she hadn’t come home, he assumed they had made sure she wasn’t going to be found.

  The rail lines went through remote and isolated areas, crossing canyons, mountains, and bridges over rivers. There were endless dumping grounds. Endless.

  Bill felt his own tears running down his face. It wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but the scales had surely been tipped. He was still going try to find her alive or dead.

  Pulling into the parking lot, he looked up at his office on the second floor. How long was he going to be here tonight? However long it took to not have that shot of straight gin he was thinking about. He knew she was really gone.

  And someone was going to pay.

&n
bsp; *****

  Eagle Pass, Texas

  Sam Dorson and his crew kept quiet while the train was stopped in Eagle Pass. They didn’t want to alert anyone, or scare off any potential marks, before heading west for El Paso. They kept the door of the boxcar opened a little, and once in a while someone looked out, checking up and down the train.

  Just when Sam started getting a little discouraged, the lookout pulled his head in, excited. “Women, getting on up ahead of us.”

  Sam jumped to the door and looked up the rail. “Shit. Lets go.”

  The men peeled out of the boxcar and started running towards their objective. The three women were almost at the train when they noticed the men running towards them. They seemed to hesitate and then climbed up into the nearest boxcar.

  Sam was on a rush, his senses were wide-awake, the anticipation thrilling. This was his game, his score. Women. He’d paid for them initially as a truck driver, then realized that truck stop girls and hitchhikers could disappear without consequences. Here it was much easier, uninterrupted hours alone in a boxcar out in the middle of nowhere.

  The men got to the car just as the door slid closed.

  “Open up bitches,” Sam yelled.

  “Don’t piss us off,” one of the others joined in.

  “Get it open,” Sam encouraged the crew. “Before the train starts moving.”

  The girls were showing some brains. They’d jammed the door with something and the crew struggled to move it. They just had to climb up there and put the muscle to it. Two men were up along the ledge trying to pry the door loose. Two more joined them, but the women’s block was holding strong. Probably freaked out, thought Sam. They should be.

  This was the reason he rode the tracks from the beginning. He assumed these ones would be Mexican or South American. That was what you found here in the mid-south. It was also why he had wanted this section of line. It provided an endless supply of people slipping into the U.S.. It was the women he enjoyed.

  Then the train started to move. Fuck! It jerked a few times and clanged as it rolled forward. Now he had a problem.

  So close, yet he was going to have to wait.

  “Last chance to open this door bitches. You’ll pay if I have to work my way in.”

  The door stayed shut.

  “Alright boys. Get on the next car, we’ll get them at the next stop, maybe sooner.” He didn’t care where he got them, just that they were his.

  Sam was last to climb aboard. He looked ahead at the car with the women, smiling. He wondered how old they were.

  Chapter 5

  Denver, Colorado

  The ride between Cheyenne and Denver hadn’t been over soon enough for Danny and Bart. There had been some hair-raising moments as they’d waited for the freight train to finally start moving.

  “How the fuck long are we going to be here?” Danny kept looking up the track.

  “It’s already been too long,” Bart watched the other side of the train.

  Danny had been sure the gang in Cheyenne would have seen them. They hadn’t, and when the train left and they cleared the city, the boys had visibly relaxed.

  The train worked its way through the foothills around Denver. They could see the lights in the distance, and before they pulled into the city the night broke and daylight cleared away the last flickers of fear still haunting their trip.

  Danny leaned over his suitcase, checking his homemade maps. “Hey Bart, we got to decide here between going south or east.”

  Bart didn’t have any maps. Danny had been into figuring all that stuff out. He thought about it a second. “Where’s this train going?”

  “I’m pretty sure this one turns east and heads towards Kansas. Eventually it ends up on the east coast.” The kid reeled off his research, most of it gained on the internet.

  Bart was still trying to get a clear picture. “What other options are there?”

  “We can get a train south through Colorado and the top of New Mexico into Texas. It’s a lot more wide open, less cities but...”

  Bart caught the hesitation and turned. “What’s the but about?”

  “Well, this line we’re on is less used, which means fewer trains and maybe some longer stops. I’m not sure.”

  It was probably thoughts of the gang back in Cheyenne that made them pick the south route in the end. They would travel through fewer cities and populated areas.

  As their train pulled into Denver they were ready, watching for cover along the track. In this case there was a bridge running over the track. Going slow enough, they jumped off and hid behind the bridge pillars until the train moved on.

  They worked their way across the rail yard, moving behind buildings and crouching in fields until they reached the south end. When they were sure which track was the one heading south, they holed up in the trees running alongside the South Platte River to wait.

  Bart was back to feeling the excitement of the trip. Jumping off and on trains brought a certain thrill that he’d never experienced before.

  Danny, on the other hand, was deep in thought, “You know this will be a tough train to catch, the thing should be moving pretty damn fast by the time in gets to here.”

  Bart looked down at the track and followed the steel lines back to the yard. Danny was right. To make sure they had chosen the right track, they had walked more than a hundred yards down from the rail switch where the tracks separated.

  They settled on walking back a ways, getting as close to the station as they could, while still being able to see if the train turned. From there they could run beside it and get on the back half of the train while it was still moving slow enough, instead of a hundred yards or more out of the station.

  Their worries were unfounded, after a number of trains rolled by, and three hours more of their time, a train made it’s way slowly through the yard before it turned to head south along their track. It moved slowly enough that they were able to walk beside the cars. The boarding was easy and this time they managed to climb under the sheltered end of a grain car.

  Bart stuck his head out, keeping an eye out as they left the rail yard. It wouldn’t be long before they were in Florida.

  Danny leaned back against the steel bulkhead lost in his head; still back in Cheyenne watching the gang do its dirty work.

  *****

  Texas

  Sam didn’t mind the heat. That was a good thing, because even with the door open the inside of a boxcar could get hot as an oven. Sometimes when the cars were partially full, they would move the freight around to help the air circulate, other times they just threw stuff out of the moving car to make room for the air to get in.

  He had a hard time with not stealing the stuff in the cars, after all it was sitting right there. Cliffy always made a good case though. They might make bigger money, but the exposure wasn’t worth it.

  You also had to move anything you boosted. That meant dealing with an outsider. If they got rolled the cops end up involved, serial numbers could be traced, and security camera’s checked. All that exposure jeopardized the whole gang. They didn’t need it.

  Cliff was lucky that it had worked out like he said. They made enough off the travelers, and most of the victims were the type who wouldn’t even call the cops. Even if they were straight, they didn’t want to explain why they were illegally riding a freight train.

  The train slowed and shook as it rolled over a bridge and Sam glanced at the open door. He wondered what the women in the car ahead were doing. Then he heard the faint squeal of a boxcar door opening somewhere. The sound didn’t last long, like the door was only moved a bit.

  Shit! Sam jumped up and sprinted towards the door. Something blue caught his eye and he looked down. Three bundles were rolling and somersaulting down the bank. Two blue and one yellow. The bitches had jumped off the train. Fuck.

  He turned, looking for his man who was supposed to be watching for the women. The Raildog popped out from between the two cars and started working his wa
y along the edge to the door.

  “They jumped you asshole, where were you?”

  The gangster clung to the side of the rocking boxcar while trying to explain, “Well, it was too windy to have a smoke,” he noticed the look on Sam’s face and stopped talking.

  “You had a job to do shithead,” Sam shook with anger. “Get the fuck off my train.”

  The gangster stopped edging towards the door, struggling to comprehend what he was being told. “What do you mean man?”

  “Let go. Get the fuck out of here. Don’t make me come out there, or I’ll make it worse.”

  The gangster knew the stories. He’d seen the results of Sam’s temper more than once. He looked down at his feet balanced precariously on the thin steel ledge, and then out at the passing countryside as the train gained speed.

  Sam watched as the man picked his spot and pushed off the train. He kept his eyes on him as he hit the bank rising up alongside the tracks. He watched as the gangster slammed against a rock outcrop, his momentum coming to an abrupt halt.

  Sam was so pissed he didn’t notice he was squeezing the edge of the door with all his strength. Bastard. Three women lost. He shook his head. He had already made plans about what he was going to do with them, had already visualized every minute of his enjoyment in his head. Now he was left with a long trip to El Paso without any company.

  He wanted to hit something.

  *****

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Bobby Rackman didn’t feel he had the luck of the Irish today. Sitting in one of his usual spots in the Bellagio. The blackjack table in the corner offered a good view of the action on the casino floor. He was almost through his daily limit of play money. It was a good thing it was the beginning of the month. His crew should be starting to filter in one at a time over the next couple days.

  Bobby was born to be a gangster. He and his brother Doug had been in trouble early and often. How neither of them ended up in jail was a mystery to anyone who knew them. They said, of course, it was the Irish in ‘em.

  The two brothers grew up as true Boston Southies, terrorizing D Street, working their way up from stealing cars to strong arming local businesses. Rumor had it they got big enough the mob came calling. They wouldn’t give in, but they couldn’t stick around either.