Let It Burn (28 page)

I headed down to Livernois Avenue. A few more blocks south and the road dipped below the tracks. As soon as I emerged on the other side I could see the northeast corner of the yard on my right. The tracks split apart like an unraveling rope, going from four tracks to a dozen to a dozen more. There were long lines of freight cars waiting to be pulled somewhere. Just more and more cars, as far as the eye could see.

I saw a line of semis turning into the yard, each one of them carrying one of those containers you see rolling along on the open flatbed cars. As I looked toward the service entrance, I saw a pair of gates, and I knew there’d be a man or two standing in each one. I pictured them holding clipboards. I also pictured them less than amused if a pickup truck driven by a curious ex-cop got in line with the semis, so I kept driving, figuring I’d eventually find the main office.

There was a high fence running all along the edge of the yard, topped with razor wire. On the other side of the fence were the same kind of closed freight boxes I’d see on some of the freighters going through the locks. Or on the long freight trains I’d see coming over the railroad bridge from Canada. Here there were more of them in one place than I’d ever seen before, stacked two and three high for a good half a mile. I made the turn on Vernor and came around the southern edge of the yard. At last, there was a sign there,
CSX INTERNATIONAL,
with another service road. This one ran into more gates, but there was a building near the gates and maybe a better chance of someone there in a mood to humor me.

I saw an opportunity to pull off the service road even before I got to the gates. I parked in the lot and went in through the front door. There was a woman sitting behind thick glass. She looked up at me and hit a button on her desk. Her voice sounded like something half metal as it came through the speaker mounted in the glass.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m wondering if I can speak to the head of security,” I said, figuring that was as good a line as any. “I just have a couple of questions.”

“Can I ask what this is in regards to?”

“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I just want a minute of his time to ask about unauthorized people who ride on the freight trains.”

I saw her frown at that, and it occurred to me that I probably could have phrased that better. You could hear that and think I was there to accuse someone of letting riders on the trains, like maybe one of them got run over and now here I am representing a lawyer looking to make a big payday, but before I could clarify, she was already on her old-school stand-up microphone.

“Mr. Maglie will be out in a minute,” she said. “He’ll meet you just outside the door.”

I stepped outside to prepare myself for Mr. Maglie. About a minute later, a gleaming white pickup came roaring out of the yard, passing through the gate without slowing down. It came to an abrupt halt a few yards away from me. Naturally it raised a cloud of dust that I had to shield my eyes from.

“I’m Maglie,” he said as he got out of the truck. He was wearing a dark blue uniform with short sleeves, the better to show off his forearms. Pushing sixty, once a tough guy, I could tell. Now even tougher with age.

“My name is Alex McKnight.” I didn’t bother reaching out my right hand to shake his.

“What’s your business here, sir?”

I took out one of my cards and handed it to him. He read it with obvious skepticism, then handed it back to me.

“I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” I said. “Let me just say, I don’t represent anyone who’s out to make a buck or anything.”

“Who
do
you represent?”

“I’m not allowed to disclose that, but it really doesn’t matter. I’m just looking for somebody who rides on the freight trains.”

“Does this person work for the railroad?”

“No, I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Then he doesn’t ride these trains. Not in this yard.”

“This is the biggest rail yard I’ve ever seen,” I said. “How many hundreds of trains do you have coming through here every day?”

“You want an exact number?”

“No, I’m just saying. I know that people hitch rides on trains. They’ve been doing it for years.”

“Look,” he said. “I know you probably have this image in your head. Hobos riding the rails, all over the country, sitting in empty boxcars, playing the guitar, all their belongings tied up in a handkerchief and hanging from a stick…”

“I’m sure it’s not that way anymore, but—”

“Do you see all those boxes?” he said, gesturing at the stacks behind him. “That’s what we pull nowadays. It’s all closed up. It comes off the truck, we load it, we move it down the line, unload it at the destination. Do you see a place for some hobo to hitch a ride?”

“No, I honestly don’t.”

“That’s right. If they did try to hitch a ride, you know where they’d have to go? They’d have to break into one of the helping engines and ride in the empty cab. Do you think that would be a good idea?”

“I’m guessing no.”

“If we were at a construction site, would you want some vagrant to wander off the street and go climb into the cab of a big crane? Some drug addict sitting behind the controls of a twenty-ton machine?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s what we’re talking about here. A high-risk industrial environment where people can get themselves killed in about two seconds if they don’t know what they’re doing, and get other people killed, too. So unless you have some specific reason to believe that somebody is breaking into my trains…”

My trains. He actually said that.

“No,” I said. “I don’t. I just know that one person rides them somewhere. Obviously he doesn’t ride them here.”

“Obviously not. Are we done?”

“I believe we are. Thank you for your time.”

“Exit’s that away,” he said, pointing back toward Vernor. He got back into his white pickup and took off. Probably to go wash the dust off the bumpers.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m so glad I decided to stay in Detroit today.”

I got back in my own truck and sat there for a moment, trying to figure out where to go next. If there had been any justice in the world, here’s where a long line of hobos would have come skulking through the parking lot and then hopped onto the nearest train.

I was about to put the truck in gear when I noticed another man coming out of the front entrance. He held the door open for a moment, long enough to finish some joke to the receptionist. He was still laughing as he walked to his car.

He’s about my age, I thought. Better yet, he appears to be a genuine human being. I wonder if …

He went right to a perfectly restored mint green midsixties Mustang. This was my chance. I got out of the truck.

“Hey, excuse me!” I said. “Is that a 1965?”

He looked at me and smiled. “Actually, it’s 1964.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said, bending down to give it a closer look. “This is maybe the most beautiful car I’ve ever seen. Did you do the work yourself?”

“My son and I did. You want to see inside?”

“I’d love to.”

He opened the passenger’s-side door so I could make a big fuss over the interior, right down to the original gearshift knob.

“You’re not selling this,” I said, “are you?”

“Not unless you’ve got a million dollars on you.”

“If only I did,” I said, shaking my head, “but hey, you work here at the yard, right?”

“I do.”

“Cars and trains. My two passions. Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Is there someplace around here I can buy you a beer?”

*   *   *

I followed him to a place two blocks down the street. It was a workingman’s bar, for the rail workers and for the men who worked at the city’s truck garage right next door, too. A lot of steel-toed work boots had come through these doors.

“So let me ask you something,” I said, when I’d set us both up. “What’s with your man, Mr. Maglie?”

“Oh, he’s always been like that,” the man said. I hadn’t gotten his name yet. “You should have seen him before his wife came back.”

“Someone came
back
to that?”

“Imagine being that lonely, yeah.”

“The people who ride the trains,” I said. “I was just wondering how that works, and I guess I must have hit a nerve.”

“Yeah, I’d hate to be hitching a ride and run into Maglie, but you’re really not gonna see that kind of thing here anyway.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t make sense. Trying to get through that fence, then pick out the right train … There’s too much going on here. Much better to let the train get on its way, so you know which direction it’s going in, then hop on later.”

“So you’re saying you could hop on just about anywhere.”

“No, that wouldn’t make any sense, either. Depending on what kind of load they’re carrying, these trains will get up to seventy miles an hour. You feel like trying to jump onto that?”

“So where do they get on?”

“They call it ‘catching out,’ by the way, but usually one of the small stations is your best bet. The trains will still come in slow. Sometimes they’ll even stop to switch out the crew or take on a new car or two. There’s a lot less security, plus you already know pretty much where the train is heading, because there’s not that much traffic. Hell, sometimes the crew will even tell you if you catch the right guy on the right day.”

“Have you been that guy before?”

“Maybe. Once upon a time. When I was working down the line.”

“Maglie said these guys have to break into the helper locomotives now. That that’s the only way they can ride.”

“He’s an idiot. It’s true there aren’t that many open boxcars anymore, but you’ve got the rear platforms of grain cars, you’ve got your empty slots in a car carrier. You can even lie down under a semi if it’s getting piggybacked. There’s all sorts of places you can ride, believe me. I admit, even though I’ve worked around trains all my life, I’ve often thought it might be a blast to just hop on and ride someday. See where I end up.”

“Okay,” I said, “so here’s the big question. If I wanted to find someone who’s riding the rails, where would I go?”

He looked at me. “You’re not really a train geek at all. This is why you’re buying me this beer.”

“I think you got me,” I said, “but I did love your car.”

That made him smile. “You could have asked me that from the beginning,” he said. “Because the answer is pretty simple. If someone is riding the rails, the only person in the world who’ll be able to find them is another person who’s also riding the rails. You’d be surprised at how fast word can get around. Especially if you put a little money behind it.”

“So how do I find someone like that?”

“Go to one of the smaller stations, like I said. Probably River Rouge is your best bet. Lots of trains, pretty much anything going south or east has to go through there. You should be able to find a rider if you look hard enough. Or find a worker who looks like he’s an easy touch. Like me. He’ll know where to send you.”

“River Rouge,” I said. “I got it. Here’s the last question, I promise. This one’s the hardest yet.”

“Shoot.”

“Say I don’t want to get the word out. Say I want to find out what the word is that’s already gotten out.”

“Come again?”

“My guess is that somebody’s already done exactly what you’ve just described to me. He’s found out how to get a message down the line to someone on the rails.”

“So you want to know what that message is. Even though it’s not a message for you.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

“Well, remember how I said a little money would help?”

“Yes.”

“Just bring more. That’s the one thing these guys will always respond to.”

I reached out and shook his hand.

“Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” I said. “My name’s Alex, by the way.”

“Jerry, and I wish you good luck. It sounds like you could use some.”

“You can say that again.”

I thanked him one more time. Then I went out, got in my truck, and headed downriver.

*   *   *

It’s called downriver, naturally, because the Detroit River flows south between Michigan and Canada, all the way to Lake Erie, and on the Michigan side you’ll find a set of suburbs that probably aren’t going to rival the French Riviera. The River Rouge cuts inland from the Detroit River, and it was once so polluted it caught on fire. I hear it’s a lot cleaner now, but as you cross the River Rouge you’ll still pick up the heavy smell of pig iron from the blast furnaces on Zug Island.

I found the rail yard. My new friend was right—it was a lot smaller than Livernois. There were maybe a dozen tracks at its widest point, all running north and south, with plenty of freight cars standing by. Probably just enough to give a rider a little cover, without being an overwhelming jumble. The fence that ran along Haltiner Street had a token string of barbed wire on top, but I’m pretty sure I could have gotten over it myself if I had to.

I knew better than to march through the front entrance and ask to see the head of security. Even if he didn’t turn out to be another Maglie, I had already learned my lesson about who to talk to. I found the main parking lot, across the street from the yard. A sign let me know that I’d be towed if I wasn’t there on official yard business, but I figured I could take my chances. I parked the truck and waited.

Another human being, I thought. That’s all I need here. Funny how that’s a real commodity these days, no matter where you go.

It was still the middle of the afternoon. Not exactly prime time for the men who worked in this yard to be coming out to their vehicles. Eventually, I did see two men walking across the street to the parking lot, but I didn’t get the right vibe from them. They both looked unhappy, like maybe they’d both just gotten fired. So I let them go without a word. About a half hour later, I saw another man. He looked a little happier, so I figured he was worth a shot.

“Hey, hold up,” I said as I got out of the truck. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Who are you?” He didn’t stop moving.

“I just want to ask you a question. I’m a private investigator.”