Like in a dog pack, where the animals naturally arrange themselves into a hierarchy with the alpha and beta dogs at the top and everyone else in order of ranking below.
In war, Ben had learned long ago, you always take the officers down first if you can. With the alpha and beta broken and helpless and pissing their pants on the concrete, the rest would probably try to bolt. Try being the operative word. None would get further than a few steps before they received a dose of the same medicine as their pals.
Lottie said, ‘Ben, please.’
Ben was half a heartbeat away from walking into the yard. All he had to do was let events play out exactly as he could already see them happening on the mental screen inside his head. After last night’s heavy dinner and the excessive breakfast he’d eaten back in Villeneuve that morning, a little bit of exercise was the exact thing he needed.
But then he hesitated. Actions had consequences, and while he wasn’t the least bit concerned how those consequences would affect the five guys in front of him, it occurred to him that certain repercussions were best avoided in his own interest. It was a busy street. Not Piccadilly at rush hour, but a lot busier than the sidewalks outside Elmo’s Liquor Locker at midnight. If Ben stepped through the gate into the forecourt of Dumpy’s Rods and things followed their inevitable course, someone was bound to call the cops. The aftermath of the fight was as predictable as its outcome. If Ben remained with the five unconscious bodies until the police turned up, he’d face all kinds of questioning. Even if he left before they arrived, there would be enough witness descriptions for the cops to identify him. Either way, it pointed to the likely reappearance of Sheriff Waylon Roque into Ben’s life soon afterwards.
All of that, combined with the fact that he’d have compromised his anonymity once again, when the whole damn point of leaving Villeneuve was to lie low.
Stupid.
Lottie said, ‘Do what you like, I ain’t waitin’.’ She started walking off, shaking her head.
The gang were just a few steps away. Ben watched them approach, still undecided. Then the decision was made for him when one of the five who hadn’t yet spoken a word pointed at Ben and said, ‘Hey, I seen this guy before. He’s on the news.’
Dwayne Skinner shot his buddy a sneer. ‘Yeah, right. How’s this asshole on the news?’
‘Straight up, man. It’s him for sure. He’s the dude who busted up Billy Bob Lafleur.’
Dwayne and the others were now eyeing Ben more hesitantly. ‘Is that a fact?’ Dwayne said, with as much bravado as he could sum up. ‘Don’t mean shit if he did. Lafleur’s a fuckin’ pussy faggot. Hell, my grandmother could whip his ass.’
But now their curiosity was stronger than their fighting spirit. ‘You the guy, mister?’
‘Forget it,’ Ben said. He picked up his bags, turned and kept walking. Dwayne Skinner and his pals instantly started up a chorus of chicken sounds, strutting and flapping bent arms like wings. They would never, ever know how lucky they were.
‘Changed your mind, huh?’ Lottie said as he caught up with her, handing him back the Tahoe key with a look of immense relief.
He shrugged and replied, ‘Five against one. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.’
They walked in silence back to the vehicle. Ben’s arms and legs were tingling and trembly from the pent-up adrenalin that would now slowly start to reabsorb into his system. It was a familiar feeling. All combat soldiers were used to it. Nine times out of ten, whenever his old SAS unit had been all kitted out and psyched up for battle, they’d been stood down and had to return to their quarters to shake off all the tension. But what wasn’t such a familiar feeling, and one he disliked intensely, was being recognised everywhere he went. Damn and blast Dickie Thibodeaux from the Courier, or whatever his rag was called. Ben should have smashed the photographer’s camera when he’d had the chance.
They reached the parked Tahoe, and Ben blipped the central locking and opened the rear hatch and loaded in the mass of groceries, which filled only a fraction of the cargo space. Only when they climbed aboard and Ben started the engine did Lottie reach across to touch his arm and break into a dazzling smile. ‘Wow. There was me thinkin’ there were no gentlemen left in this world. Thank you.’
‘For what? Nothing happened.’
‘You kiddin’ me? A lot happened. You stood up for a lady. Even though you hardly know me and we only just met. And that’s somethin’.’
Ben replied, ‘We’re shopping for groceries together and you’re going to cook me dinner. In some countries that’s the same as being married.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe. But trash like Dwayne Skinner ain’t worth gettin’ beat up over, not for my sake.’
‘Who said anything about getting beaten up?’
By the time they reached Chitimacha, Ben had relaxed and mostly forgotten about it. He helped Lottie unload the groceries and bring everything inside. With her larder replenished and all her ingredients for the cooking session laid out systematically on her gleaming kitchen surfaces, Lottie said, ‘Oh joy.’ She rolled up her sleeves, donned a well-used and appropriately-stained apron that said LEITHS SCHOOL OF FOOD AND WINE, and got to work with a fiercely concentrated gusto that was awesome to behold.
It soon became obvious that Ben’s presence in the kitchen was getting in her way, and so he left her to it and wandered out to the garden for a cigarette. As he smoked, out of a kind of morbid curiosity he googled up ‘Clovis Parish Louisiana local news’ on his burner phone and found the Courier’s website. Sure enough, there next to D. Thibodeaux’s trashy and sensationalistic article on the attempted liquor store holdup was the photo of Ben taken outside the Bayou Inn.
Which, needless to say, was how Dwayne Skinner’s buddy had recognised him.
Damn it, once again.
The rest of the afternoon passed languorously. It still felt odd to Ben to have so little to do except mooch about the guesthouse and wait for evening to come. When it finally did, he was in for an eye-opener. Whatever reservations he might have been holding on to about Cajun cooking were soon to be blown away as Lottie seated him at her immaculately set, candlelit table and began lifting lids off steaming dishes of the most beguiling food he’d ever encountered.
‘So this is gumbo,’ he said, gazing at the vast helping she’d put on his plate.
‘No, this is Lottie’s gumbo,’ she corrected him with a gleeful laugh. ‘I’m spoilin’ you for anyone else. Now, please. Don’t talk. Eat.’
Ben willingly obeyed the command. The gumbo was a rich, sumptuous meat stew made from chicken and andouille sausage cooked with celery and bell peppers and onion, all melted together on a glutinous and indecently flavoursome bed of what Lottie called dirty rice. If this was dirt, he was happy to gobble it down, three or four heaped forkfuls to Lottie’s every one.
‘What’s that seasoning?’ he tried to ask, but his mouth was too crammed full to speak. He chewed, swallowed and repeated the question more coherently, and Lottie explained that it was something
