Midnight Fantasy

His muscles were heavy from hard, manual labor. He wore scuffed black cowboy boots, tight jeans, a worn white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket.

Frenchy.

Death triggered deep, primal needs.

Death. Violence. Sex. Somehow they went together.

Alone with his demons, without Frenchy to irritate and distract him, Tag needed a bar fight or a woman—bad. So bad, he almost wished he’d gone to the funeral and wrestled some shrimper for a topless waitress. So bad, he almost wished he was in jail nursing a hellish hangover with the rest of Frenchy’s wild bunch.

Instead he’d driven his motorcycle—too fast and over such rough roads, he’d almost rolled. He’d scared himself. Which was a sign that cold as he was in his lonely life, he wasn’t ready to end it. When he’d calmed down, he’d come to the cemetery to pay his last respects.

The silvery night was warm and lovely.

Perfect kind of weather to hang out in a cemetery perfumed by wild flowers and glistening with moonlight.

If you could stand cemeteries.

Which Tag couldn’t. Any more than he could stand funerals. Especially the funeral of his best friend. Not when his own mood was as brittle and hopeless as the morning his mother had died, as the afternoon his father had slammed the door in his face.

Frenchy’s funeral had been a blowout brawl at Shorty’s. The cocktail waitresses, even Mabel, had danced topless on the pool tables. Some of the shrimpers had found their dance inspiring, and since there weren’t ever enough women to go around in Shorty’s, the “funeral” had gotten so wild, two of Frenchy’s ex-wives had called the cops who hauled the shrimpers and barmaids to jail.

It had been just the sort of uproar that gave shrimpers and the industry a bad name.

Then Frenchy’s will had been read. Everybody really got mad when they found out that, fool that he was, Frenchy had left that black dog, Tag Campbell, everything.

Everything. Boats. Restaurant. Fishhouses. Wharves. Even the beach house which was practically an historic landmark. Everything.

Campbell.

That snobby bastard! He didn’t even like to fish! Still, he was the best fisherman any of them had ever seen. Just as he was way too popular with their women even though he secretly despised them. The bastard preferred books to beer even though he could drink any one of them under the table. Tag Campbell was too proud and high-and-mighty to hang out with the likes of them at Shorty’s. How in the hell had he outsmarted them all—even Frenchy?

Everything was his.

There was lots of angry muttering.

“It isn’t right! Frenchy dead on that boat with just that lying Tag Campbell to tell the tale.”

“If you ask me, the bastard killed him.”

“You heard the coroner. Autopsy report says massive coronary. Says Frenchy smoked and drank too much. Says it’s a miracle Frenchy lived as long as he did.”

“I say it was murder. Frenchy was fit as a fiddle. Why just two nights ago he was drunker than a skunk dancing on that table with Mabel.”

Rusty and Hank, two of the rougher prisoners, deckhands Tag had fired for laziness and pure meanness, vowed that as soon as they got loose, they’d see their friend, Frenchy, avenged.

Frenchy had a lot more money than the shrimpers suspected. The sheriff paid Tag a visit just to tell him he’d be smart to leave town, at least till Rusty and Hank cooled off.

At the sight of the sheriff’s car in his drive and Trousers, his Border collie, slinking off to the woods, Tag grimaced. No wonder Trousers was scared. The big man cut an impressive figure in his uniform and silvered sunglasses. He had heavy features, squared-off shoulders, and a big black gun hanging from his thick belt.

Tag had dealt with more than his share of armed bullies in uniforms. The law, they called themselves.

Self-righteous bullies, strutting around in their shiny boots like they owned the world. They’d boarded his boats, slashed his nets, kicked his ice chests over and swept his catch overboard, fined his captains. No sooner had Sheriff Jeffries slammed his meaty fist against his screen door and bellowed Tag’s name, than sweat started trickling under his collar. A lot of his cats scurried under the house or after the cowardly Trousers. Others hunkered low behind pot plants to watch the suspicious character stomping down their breezeway.

“I just let Rusty and Hank out. They’re calling you a murderer.”

You half-wild, no-good bastard.

His own father had wrongly accused him of embezzlement and grand larceny. Anger burned in Tag’s throat, but he smiled as if he didn’t give a damn and saluted the man with a whiskey bottle. “You got a warrant—”

“Sometimes, Campbell, the smart thing is to walk away.”

Tag stared at his own reflection in the silver glasses and then pushed the door wider. “I ain’t runnin’.”

The sheriff planted himself on his thick legs and then leaned against the doorway.

“Jeffries, those guys talk big when they’re safe in jail, but they’re like dogs barking from inside a fence. You let ’em out, and they’ll lick my hand like puppies.”

“Just a friendly warning, Campbell.”

“Thanks, amigo.”

Still, Tag had opened a drawer, loaded his automatic and stuffed it in the waistband of his jeans before setting out on his bike alone.

Numbly Tag studied his friend’s tombstone. Frenchy had been mighty proud of the pink stone. He’d chosen it himself on a lark five years earlier right after he’d brought Tag home. Frenchy was known for cheating at cards, and had won the plot off one of Rockport’s most respectable citizens in a drunken poker game at Shorty’s.

“You cheated him,” the man’s indignant wife had ranted, and the whole town, at least the women, had believed her. “You got him drunk, so you could cheat him.”

Now Frenchy was as ashamed of his lack of talent at cards which made cheating a necessity as he was proud of his drinking skills. He might have gallantly returned the plot had she not accused him of cheating.

“We wuz drinking his whiskey, I’ll have you know, and I was even drunker than he was, lady,” Frenchy had declared almost proudly. “Could be he cheated me.”

The lady sued, but the judge, a poker player, had sided with Frenchy.

Tag studied Frenchy’s name and the date of his birth and the single line etched in caps on the bottom of the stone—IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED.

Slowly Tag lowered his gaze. Instead of flowers, a mountain of beer cans and baseball caps were piled high on the mound of clods. Indeed, every baseball cap that had been nailed to the ceiling of Shorty’s had been enthusiastically ripped off and reverently placed on his grave.

Tag’s eyes stung. Frenchy would’ve been mighty proud.

Grief tore a hole in Tag’s wide chest as he slowly rose and stalked over to his bike. He pulled on his black leather jacket, zipped it. Next came his gloves, his black helmet. Straddling the big black monster, jumping down hard, revving the engine, he made enough noise to wake the dead.

But then maybe that was his intention.

Not that it did any good.

Frenchy wasn’t coming back.

Tag roared to the gate, skidding to a stop in a pool of brilliant gold that spilled over him from the streetlight.