From the standpoint of the railroad companies, one might think that an intensified law enforcement focus on the subject of the FTRA, wrong-headed or not, would be a good thing, since it would probably result in even more security and fewer criminal incidents involving transients. But Ed Trandahl, a spokesman for Union Pacific, laughed when I mentioned Grandinetti, and said, “Oh, yeah. We know about him.” He went on to say that “The FTRA is a totally overblown deal. Union Pacific has thoroughly explored this with our railroad police, and there’s no massive organization at work here. Our investigators have gone over hundreds of cases and we can’t find any correlation to what Mr. Grandinetti is saying.”
The 39-year-old hobo who brought the heat down onto the rails, Robert Joseph Silveria (aka Sidetrack) has the word “Freedom” tattooed on his neck. In his case freedom is, indeed, just another word for nothing left to lose—on January 31, 1998, he pled guilty to two counts of first degree murder, and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for having caused the deaths of Michael Clites, 24, and William Petit, Jr., 39, both transients, by means of blunt force trauma. He is due to be tried in Kansas and Florida on similar charges, and there is solid evidence connecting him with the murders of transients in Emeryville, Oregon, in West Sacramento, in Salt Lake City, and Whitefish, Montana. When I first interviewed Detective Mike Quakenbush of Salem, Oregon, who arrested Silveria, he told me that he believed Silveria was “good for a lot more murders than those with which he’d been linked,” and, according to the San Francisco Examiner, Silveria himself told an uncle by marriage that he had killed 47 people out of a deep anger. In letters to a former jail acquaintance, Silveria declared that he was the leader of the homeless nation, and wrote, “I could have tortured others of your world, but I chose to torture my world, because I preyed on the weak.”
Quakenbush described Silveria as being cordial, amiable, having a pleasant manner typical of serial killers, and believes that this allowed him to get close to his victims. Silveria reminds him of Eddie Haskell from the Leave It to Beaver show. But Silveria is not a member of the FTRA. In fact, he made a point during his confession that his crimes had nothing to do with the FTRA. There’s no doubt that Silveria rode and jungled up with FTRA hobos, but such loose associations are common on the rails and hardly constitute evidence of collusion.
Quakenbush’s take on the FTRA is more restrained than that of Officer Grandinetti. In his view, they have the profile of a ’50s or ’60s biker gang, and though they have no set hierarchy, he suspects there may be powerbrokers among them, “people who can get things done.” But he told me it’s impossible to get a handle on them because of the anonymity of their lifestyle, which enables them to slide through the system, to move two states down the road in a matter of hours without going through easily surveilled areas such as airports and bus stations. Maybe, he said, there’s a pecking order based on seniority, on how long an FTRA member has been riding; but again, it’s hard to be sure. My impression of Quakenbush’s attitude toward the FTRA is that they’re interesting to him from a law enforcement standpoint, but that he’s got more pressing matters on his desk.
Madcat’s a veteran of Desert Storm, and he’s got pictures to prove it. Photographs of him and his buddies dressed in camo and posed with their weapons in the sand. He keeps them wrapped in a small American flag, and uses them like ID. Breaks them out, explains the meaning and circumstances attendant upon each, then packs them up, never to be shown again. I’ve tried to get him talking about the war, thinking that the reason he’s on the rails and homeless must have some relation to his tour of duty. He hasn’t told me much. He once described the enormous encampment in the desert where he was billeted, a medium-sized town of lion-colored tents and roaring machinery. One day, he says, he was driving a truck through the desert and came upon a crate of Stinger missiles lying in the middle of nowhere. He thought this was funny until he was ordered to transport them to an arsenal and learned that they were unstable, that a sudden jolt might launch one straight at the back of his head—at least that’s what he was told. He drove at 3 mph all the way, and was disciplined for his tardiness.
“Don’t matter you got smart bombs,” he says, “when all there is, is idiots to drop ’em.”
Madcat doesn’t talk much about anything in his past. From his accent, I’d guess he’s from the south, maybe Texas; the way he says “forward” (“fao-wud”) puts me in mind of people I know in Houston. He’s average height, skinny, got a touch of gray in his ragged beard. Early thirties, I figure. A sharp, wary face dominated by large grayish blue eyes, the kind of face one sees staring glumly at the camera in Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs. Whenever we’ve ridden together, he rarely speaks unless I ask him a question. For the most part he stays quietly drunk and plays with dogs belonging to other hobos. Since many FTRA tramps travel with dogs, he’s gotten to know quite a few of them.
“They’re all right,” he says. “You mess with ’em, they’ll stand up to you. And there’s some you want to be careful around. But you can say the same about a lot of bars you walk into, the people there.”
This particular afternoon I’m supposed to meet an FTRA member known as Erie Flash at Madcat’s office, a Seattle tavern that caters to transients. Ranks of pint and half-pint bottles of Thunderbird stand in front of a clouded mirror behind the bar, and the chewed-up leatherette booths are occupied by an assortment of damaged-looking people: an elderly Santa-shaped gentleman with a lumpish, mauve nose; a pair of down-at-heels Afro-Americans; a disheveled middle-aged couple who’re having an argument. A chubby Aleut woman in a torn man’s shirt and jeans sits at the bar, holding her head in her hands. Madcat’s not in the best shape himself. He’s nursing a glass of wine, pressing the heel of one hand against his brow; he’s been in a fight, and sports a bloody nose and a discolored lump over one eye. Fighting is the most prominent symptom of Madcat’s problem. When he’s staying in a city, in a squat or a mission, he’ll get in a fight a day, sometimes more; he claims that fighting is the only way he “can get the devil out.” But when he’s riding, it seems that the closeness of the train soothes his particular devil. It’s possible, I think, the trains have a similar effect on others, which would explain in part why there’s so much sadness out on the rails—some hobos are attracted to the trains because the potency of those 2-million-ton presences and their metal voices act to subsume their pain.
We’ve been waiting almost an hour when Flash makes his appearance. He’s tall, physically imposing, and has a biker intensity that’s in line with his reputation as a man with—according to the grapevine—no compunctions about murder. It’s said he manufactures speed from starter fluid and drugstore inhalers, among other ingredients, and once he gets cranked up, he’s a dangerous person to be around. Under a denim jacket, he’s wearing his FTRA colors, a black bandana held in place by two silver conchos. Thick black hair threaded with gray falls to his shoulders. Dark, alert eyes. His hands are large, with prominent knuckles; his features are well-defined, strong, but dissolution has taken a toll, and what I’m seeing now is the ruins of a handsome man. He’s been staying with a local woman in her home, and looks healthier than other gang members I’ve encountered. Like most hobos, he doesn’t offer a handshake to someone he’s just met.