Midnight Fantasy. Ann Major

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      He turned and looked back at the cemetery.

      Stay with me, Frenchy.

      Suddenly, time as Tag knew it did a tailspin. Or maybe the world just turned topsy-turvy. Whatever. The moon got bigger. Then it flattened itself into the shape of a huge pink egg in that inky sky. Stars popped like fireworks. For a second or two Tag felt there really might be a mastermind up there.

      Tag got all warm and tingly inside. The wind sped up and the silvery night pulsed bluish-pink. A couple of beer cans came loose from the grave and started to roll straight toward Tag.

      He shut his eyes, but the same pulsating, vivid rosy-blue fog swirled behind his eyelids, too. He blinked. Open or shut, the otherworldly, blue-pink radiance pulsed.

      After a while, somebody, maybe Frenchy, switched off the pink light, and the moon settled down. The streetlamp came back on, gold and bright as ever. The night beyond was silvery dark. The can didn’t stop rolling till it hit the toe of Tag’s boot. He picked it up, noticed it was Frenchy’s favorite brand. Tag flattened the can, stuffed it in his back pocket.

      What the hell had that been about? Had the streetlight malfunctioned? Or was it just him?

      As he stared at the moon he felt different somehow, not so tight and morose. The hole in his chest seemed to have closed. And the night, like his future, beckoned with amazing possibilities.

      Had СКАЧАТЬ