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compatriot, who handed over two thick stacks of banded cash.
    “Good work,” the suited man proclaimed. “With the Cuno family out of the way, things should be looking up for
our
organization. We’re looking to assume a lot of their old territories.”
    Monster let the suited man, whose name was Jacob Golen and who lived in the Bradford Woods section of the Pittsburgh metro area with his second wife and four kids, crow a bit more. When the fellow suddenly realized how much bluster he was unloading to a man who’d certainly seen a harder part of the criminal world than he had, he silenced himself with a squirm.
    One of Monster’s lieutenants, a prison-cut mountain of a man called Doyle, sidled up to his boss with the cash.
    “We’re good.”
    Monster shook hands with Golen and patted him on the shoulder.
    “Safe drive back to the ’Burgh.” Monster nodded.
    After Golen and his crew of paid-for muscle took off in a pair of SUVs, Doyle turned back to his boss.
    “Why didn’t we just kill him and keep the money?”
    “They trust us now.” Monster shrugged. “Next time, our cut’ll be twice as much. But there’ll come a time when we get too expensive, and they’ll start looking at us like a liability. By then, we’ll know what they’re worth to their enemies, and it’ll be a seller’s market.”
    Doyle nodded thoughtfully, but Monster knew the younger man had all the brains God gave a woodchuck. What Monster had just described was precisely what he’d just done to the Cuno family. That Golen had no idea how involved his rivals were with the BCRA told him all he needed to know about the man.
    As the SUVs bounced out of the field and onto the dirt road that would eventually return them to the world they understood, Monster glanced around for a beer. As he did, he felt the same old peculiar feeling he got in his legs every time he spent more than a few hours on “dry land.” Some of the other guys were already tinkering with the motorbikes their landlocked supply teams had hauled up on trailers, but this wasn’t for Monster. He understood the appeal of bikes, but he’d taken to the rails for a reason. It was like a secret world constantly in motion away from societal mores. It was the last place other than the open ocean where he felt like a proper pirate.
    The rails were home.
    The men were in high spirits. They knew the killing of Ferris Aaron and the framing of the Cuno family had gone off without a hitch. Well, aside from the death of Knucklehead and the maiming of Webster.
    Monster had seen some awful violence in his day. Perpetuated a bit, too. But seeing a bear of a man bleed out from a single well-placed bullet to the shoulder while a skinny kid got half his face and all his fingers shredded off by a shotgun blast and somehow lived to tell the tale? That was one for the books, all right. Sure, Webster had begged for death due to the blast sheering off half his face. But Monster knew Web’s brother back at the camp, Ace, would’ve objected to having his opinion go unheard.
    So Monster let the skinny kid writhe on the train car floor while they tried to save Knucklehead. Monster had hoped Web might kick off on his own on the ride up to the campsite, but despite his screaming and carrying on that each breath was his last, he made it all the way back. By the time they jumped off the freight car, the BCRA leader was at peace with Knucklehead’s death and the younger man’s survival. They fireman-carried Webster to camp, delivering him straight to their medic — really, the one ex-serviceman who remembered any first aid. But the moment Ace saw his brother, he threw up an afternoon’s worth of beer, chips, and hot dogs.
    It took hours to stitch up Web’s stumps and remove the pellets from what remained of his face. One of the guys said it looked like Web’s cheek, jaw, and eye socket had been replaced by a tall-stack pastrami sandwich. Monster forced himself not to laugh at this, due to Ace’s