Had a slightly… bananas… prompt. Wrote about racketeering. Enjoy!
It wasn’t known as Banana Town when Gus moved there. The town, that is. It wasn’t known as much – just a crossroads with some houses, a petrol station and one of those everything-and-anything grocery shops. If it had a name, Gus scrubbed it out in the same way he scrubbed out anyone who tried to tell him not to turn a crossroads with some houses, a petrol station and a grocery shop into the world’s most provincial criminal headquarters.
Gus was in the business of digital crime, although he always told people he worked in logistics. That was his little joke. ‘What do you do?’ ‘Freelance logistics. Online. Mostly groceries.’ ‘Oh, is it fun?’ ‘It pays the bills.’ It also paid for his swimming pool, annual trips to the Caribbean and the long overdue tarmacking of Banana Town’s crossroads. When he first arrived in the town, Gus worked from the grocery shop – it was where the internet connection worked best – and this added to the dingy mystique of his logistics guise. On rare video calls with business associates in other states, his backdrop was always a crate of bananas.
Of course, the owner of the grocery shop hadn’t invited Gus into her store. He merely pulled into the petrol station one airless summer day, filled his 2004 Honda Civic with petrol and walked over to the grocery store to purchase a packet of chewing gum, some grapes and a pencil.
‘You get a lot of traffic here?’ he asked the grocery shop owner, Trish, as she tallied his order by hand. Trish was at least thirty years older than Gus, not that either of them could be considered young.
‘Yes and no. Most people just stop for petrol and carry on going. That’ll be four pounds and thirty.’
By the time she finished counting his change, Gus had unearthed a dusty plastic chair from the household goods section, pulled it up to the desk and flipped open his laptop computer.
Trish took a long look at him and said, ‘You can stick around if you help me close up shop every day. There’s a bungalow over the way that’s needed a resident since Bobbie Snowdon passed away.’
‘Sure thing,’ Gus said easily. ‘Do you want to know what I do first?’
Trish thought for a moment. ‘Would me knowing it make any difference to you doing it?’
‘No.’
‘Is it illegal or distasteful?’
‘Yes and, well, maybe, depending on your moral compass.’
‘Is it something that would get you treated badly in prison?’
‘Not really. It doesn’t involve children or sex crimes, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Trish thought a moment longer. ‘Well, then, as long as you can lift crates, I’ll mind my own business and you can mind yours.’
When she realised that Gus was in the business of swindling hundreds of people a week out of their pensions, life savings and other assorted valuables via romance scams, Trish raised one eyebrow. When she learnt that he was making eight figures, she raised the other eyebrow. When Gus offered to tarmac the crossroads, she raised both eyebrows and said, ‘I want an invitation to Bermuda next year.’
It was around the time of the tarmacking that the town officially became known as Banana Town. No one was sure who was in charge of naming and renaming towns, but everyone knew it was Gus who suggested it. By then he’d been in Banana Town for five years, had organised an annual dinner and dance for victims of road traffic accidents and bought a plot of land across from the petrol station, then built a large but not ostentatious house. He’d also paid off several law enforcement officers, enlisted the country’s most prominent lawyer and dug a suspiciously large hole in his back garden following a visit from one of his business partners. On an unrelated note, he began work on his swimming pool.
Trish, for her part, gave him a desk of his own in an alcove by the fruit counter.
About five years after that, a sleek car pulled into the grocery store’s single parking space. Two sleek people got out, walked into the grocery store and presented sleek legal documents to Trish.
‘Ms Patricia Kaminsky?’
‘Well, no one’s called me that for years. What can I do you for?’
‘You’re under arrest on suspicion of arms trafficking. We have a warrant to raid the premises.’
Ten minutes later, a sleek box of AK-47s was produced from beneath a shipment of raincoats.
Gus, who was at his desk taking a work call during this encounter, continued Trish’s gunrunning operation while she was in prison.
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Copyright © 2021 by Francesca Astraea
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