I, Racki (Part XVII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

The day had been a complete and total success as far as I was concerned and had carried me to every corner of Stone Creek and beyond to do what I could do for my best friend Hannibal and the Wilson family. I needed to tell Salome that she had nothing to worry about when it came to this evening, so I grabbed a cell phone off the first kid I saw back at the Fish Fry. There weren’t going to be any screw-ups. It was a simple, easy plan with an objective so manifestly doable that it was all I could do to not pat myself on the back. Details had been changed, things Salome didn’t need to know about, but the day Racki Turkz doesn’t go the extra mile for his homies will be the day they put this young buck in the ground. Inexorable forces of fortune gathered and after a few rings I heard a voice and that voice was the crisp alto of Stone Creek’s favorite daughter Salome Wilson.

She got right to it. “Pay them?”

“Yep,” I told her.

“Not all of it, I hope.”

“Twenty percent.”

“They know their assignments?”

“To the letter,” I said.

“Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“So you say.” I could hear the second thoughts circling in her voice.

“I got it all under control,” I said.

My kind words gave her pause. “Hmm,” she said, “that makes me feel better.” I could tell that she had gotten tired of this conversation when she said, “I’m done with you, Racki.”

After that I said good-bye and hung up, tossing the cell phone into the nearest trashcan I could find. I said, “That’ll be the day.”

Lena Binks announced the winner of the Stone Creek Go-Kart Grand Prix. It was Bal Thackeray in a stunning upset.

It was that time of day when a lot of the townies went back to their houses to eat so there weren’t as many people for me to shove out of the way. I went to push my beret back off my forehead and remembered I had given it up, like an amputee who still thinks he can feel his foot. My feet were on autopilot walking down the sidewalk and since I really didn’t have a whole lot to do before the Prom shortly thereafter I was cutting across a yard on Woolsey Street and going around the back of that familiar ranch house to see Petra Plascak and Hannibal looking back at me, her with that stupid blameless look she always wore, him washing his car shirtless, the two of them talking blandly, the ultra-cool bored talk, when you don’t dare say what you really want.

For the final installment, click here.