Ace felt kind of proud of himself as he reveled in the stinging hot shower, and maybe a little smug too.  His fixit job had bought him a few extra days if he needed them.  Maybe he’d get a chance to stop by Leets Store later and snag a few beers.  And maybe the old fart would have some gossip about why the widow Travers was so broke.  The hot water felt good against his back and butt and thigh, loosened the skin.

Back in his room he looked into the duffel bag.  Should he go with the blue jeans or the blue jeans for his trip to Shady Oaks?  Two years on the road and he’d never given much thought to his wardrobe, much less had the money to buy more than fresh jeans or a shirt now and then.  He checked his watch.  7:30. Maybe he’d try out one of the cafes downtown before he went to the nursing home.  Jeans it is.
Annie had fresh coffee brewed and bacon sizzling in a cast iron skillet when he went into the kitchen.  The café would have to wait.

“Morning.”  She turned from the stove and smiled.

“You know, Mrs. Travers, you don’t have to fix me a hot breakfast.”

“Comes with the room,”  She said.  Her smile disappeared and she worried the bacon around with a fork.  Ace could tell there was something on her mind.

“Everything okay?”  He asked, helping himself to a mug of coffee.

Annie turned from the stove, a concerned look on her face.  “Maybe I should be asking you.  You were shouting in your sleep last night.”

Oh shit.

“It woke Chaz up and he came and got me, but I didn’t want to barge in, I mean, it’s none of my business, but...”  Annie gave the bacon another shove.

“I’m sorry.  Sometimes I have nightmares.”  Like almost every fucking night.  “Maybe I should find another place.  I have some pills, a prescription, but I’m out.”

“Maybe you should just get the prescription filled.”

Ace didn’t want to tell her that the scrip was from an imaginary doctor in Illinois and wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny.   “I should.  Tell Chaz I’m sorry, too.”

Annie held up two eggs.  Ace raised one finger and stepped out onto the back stoop with his coffee while she cooked.  He thought he might have beaten the demon last night.  He’d sat in that rocking chair and watched all the lights blink out, one by one, as Pecan Street went to sleep, rocked until he felt himself dozing in the peaceful breeze.  The pills helped.  Booze helped sometimes too.  Maybe he should just suck it up and move to the Travel-Aire.

“Ready.”  Annie’s bell-like voice was followed out the door by the aroma of bacon and hot toast and rich coffee.  Screw the Travel-Aire.  He’d figure something out.

*

At 8:00 A.M. Ace Evans walked through the open double doors of the Shady Oaks retirement home.  He stepped aside for a young black woman pushing an old white man who was tied in a wheelchair through the doors toward a patch of morning sunlight.  He paused just inside before going to the desk.  There were lots of wheelchairs, all filled with crooked wrinkled white people, all being helped by young black people.

Ace knew he was color blind, but the scene in the main room of the rest home brought him up short.  The only people he’d met so far were white.  Leets, Dicky, Reena, Art Drury, Annie and the kids.  And all of the people he’d seen up and down Pecan Street had been white.  Had he just stepped into a weird movie?  Flashback to 1950?  Was the Deep South still so racially divided?  He shook his head, clearing it, and walked over to the desk.

“Good morning.” Ace said to an older black woman sitting behind the main desk.  “I’d like to see Granville Tubbs, please.  I understand he’s a, uh, patient here.”

“Guest.”  The woman smiled up at him. “We refer to them as guests.  It’s early yet.  Your name?”  She flipped through some stand up file cards and drew one out.

“Ace Evans.  Andrew Evans, but everyone calls me Ace.”

The woman studied the card carefully.  “You’re not on the list,” she said looking up at him.

“List?”

“Visiting hours are from nine to ten thirty and two to three thirty except for family unless the guest wishes to see you.  Mr. Tubbs is not, um...very responsive right now.  You’ll have to wait for visiting hours.”
   
“Granny?” 
     
“Mr. Tubbs.”

“But you’re not on the list.”

“Who is on the list?”  Ace had a smile plastered on his face that had no business being there, as fast as his good mood was evaporating.

“I’m afraid I can’t share that with you, sir.”

Ace rubbed his face with both hands and got as far as eight.  “Did Mr. Tubbs make out this list?”  Granny wouldn’t have any way of knowing about the alias he was using, but maybe he just put the name Ace on the damn list. 

“No.”

“Then who did?  I could have a talk with them.  Get on the list.”

“I’m afraid I can’t ...”

“Share that with you,” Ace finished the sentence for her.  The woman’s smile disappeared and her nostrils flared.  Ace didn’t need to make an enemy of the gate-keeper right off the bat.  “I’m sorry ma’am.  I’ve been, ah, out of the country for a few years.  I don’t mean to push.  Nine you say?  I’ll just find a chair and wait.  How’s that?”

The woman’s expression softened a bit and she nodded at him before greeting a portly white man in a striped suit and suspenders who walked by.  “Good morning, Mr. Tremont.”
           
“Good morning, Mae.”  The man gave a small wave and disappeared down a long corridor.
           
So that’s the lawyer, Tremont, Ace mused, while he looked for an unoccupied chair.  He’s a good bit older than the lovely Reena, he observed.  Wonder how he managed that?  Ace couldn’t find a seat so he decided to wait outside. He found a bench well away from the growing cluster of wheeled chairs and old people.  It wasn’t that they upset him or repulsed him.  Not at all.  He just didn’t feel like talking to anyone for, he checked his watch, fifty two minutes.

*

  Mae asked Ace for his drivers’ license and made him sign a card before she called for an orderly to escort him to the Critical Care Ward.  The young black man was dressed in neat starched white slacks and shirt and might as well have had the word ‘Security’ stenciled on the back, given his bulk and sour demeanor.
          
“Tubbs, huh?” Security grunted without turning his head.
           
“You know him?”  Ace asked, trying to make some kind of connection with the guy.
           
“Yeah, I knows him.”  Security stopped at a door with ‘Critical’ stenciled on the glass.  “I’ll wait out here.”
           
 “Be quite a wait, sport.  I’ll be here ‘til visiting hours are over.”
           
“Doubt that,” Security grunted.  “You ain’t seen ‘im yet.”
           
 “Suit yourself,” Ace said and entered the room.
           
 The Critical Care Ward was a long room with four beds separated by curtains.  A stout black girl, a young woman, sat in the middle of the room reading a magazine.  Ace heard a low voice coming from the far end of the ward.  He stepped over and waited for her to look up.  She was a hefty no-nonsense looking woman with a short tight fro and bright red lipstick on massive pursed lips.  Her name-tag read ‘Pritchard’.
           
“Granville Tubbs?”  Ace asked, afraid to keep her from Brad and Angelina for too long.  She cricked her head toward the end of the room and went back to the tabloid.
           
When Ace walked by the next to the last bed he glanced over to see a shriveled form lying under a sheet; a withered man, gaunt as a holocaust survivor, hooked up to some sort of monitor.  That’s when he realized that there was a low, disjointed, almost random beeping in the room.  Four different machines throbbed lowly at varying rates. 
           
The lawyer, Tremont, was sitting in a hard backed chair next to the bed in the last station leafing through a yellow pad.  Ace ignored him and stepped close to the bed.  Granville Tubbs lay there, eyes closed, a clear plastic thing clipped to his nose, an IV taped to his left arm, short gray wispy hair matted to his forehead.
           
“It’s me Granny.  It’s Ace.”  Ace tenderly brushed back the hair from the old man’s face.
           
“Who’re you?”  Tremont grumped, looking over a pair of half glasses, obviously annoyed.
           
Ace took an immediate dislike to the officious prick sitting in the chair, wondering if Tremont was Tubbs’ lawyer or what?  He bit back the smart-ass comment he had ready and said, “Ace Evans.  I’m an old friend.”
           
“Hmmm.”
           
Ace decided to keep his cards hidden and play with the pompous jerk a little.  “You the doctor?  How’s he doing?”
           
“Hmmm.  No.  I’m Harlan Tremont, his lawyer.  Evans you say?”
           
“That’s right.”
           
“Hmmm.  Can’t say I’ve ever heard Mr. Tubbs mention you.” 
           
Most people will lose a staring contest with a lawyer, especially a self-important one, trying to figure out what his adversary is really after and how far he’ll bend.  Most people aren’t former SEALS and undercover operatives that have faced down some of the cruelest, most sadistic and heatless criminals in the world.  Behind his bland expression Ace was enjoying himself.
           
“You talk to Tubbs often then?”
           
“We talk.  Not recently, I’m afraid.”
           
“But you know him well?”  Ace probed.  The lawyer blinked first.
           
“Very well.  I’m his attorney, as I told you.  Evans, you say?”
           
“That’s right.  So if you know him so well, can you tell me the name of his best friend?”
           
Tremont sensed immediately he was being challenged.  “I don’t believe I have to answer your questions.”
           
“How about his wife?”  The lawyer blinked again, blinked so hard it was like Ace had thumped him on the ear.
           
“Tubbs doesn’t have a wife.”  Tremont blustered.
           
The severity of Tremont’s reaction teased at something in Ace’s brain. “Care to bet?”
           
“Certainly not.”
           
“How much?”
           
“I’m not betting.”  Tremont’s voice was rising with each exchange.
           
“What was Tubbs’ rank when he mustered out of the Navy?  That’s such a softball you oughta’ clear the fence.”
           
Tremont’s eyes darted around the room looking for the answer. “Hmmm.  Chief!  He was a Chief.”
           
Ace made a buzzing sound. “Ehhhh.  Want to double down?”
           
“I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.  He retired as Chief Tubbs.  I know I’m right.”  Tremont started stuffing the pad into a briefcase, huffing and hmming, wrestling his jacket on.  “I don’ know who you are, sir, or what you’re implying.  Not that it matters.  I have to tell you, I resent these, hmmm, implications.” 
           
“Sorry if we got off on the wrong foot here, Tremont,” Ace lied. 
           
The chunky lawyer paused at the end of the curtain and turned back toward Ace.  He was squinting and his nose was bunched up.  Ace thought he looked like a mad little kid.  Then Tremont spun away and hurried out of the room.
           
Security caught the door before it closed and stuck his head in.  “Everything cool in here?” he asked Pritchard, who had silently moved her chair over to get a better eye and ear on Ace and Tremont’s little set-to.
           
“S’cool.”  She turned back from Security with a raised eyebrow for Ace.
           
“You gonna be much longer, man?” 
           
Ace checked his watch.  “Be fifty-five minutes.”  Security looked put out when he closed the door.

*

When Ace pulled the clipboard from the foot of Tubbs’ bed Pritchard shot up from her chair and snatched it back.  “You cain’t be messin’ with that?”
           
“Why the hell not?”  He snatched it back.    
           
“I’m gonna call security!”
           
“I thought that might be his name.”
           
“Huh?”
           
“Please don’t.  Please?”  They were playing tug-of-war with the clipboard.   ”I just want to look at his chart?”
           
“Ain’t supposed to be foolin with that.”
           
“I just want to read it.”  Ace started reading.
           
“Don’t you tell nobody.”
           
“I won’t.”  Ace said without looking up, and flipped back a page.  “What time does the doctor make rounds?”
           
“Thursdays, lessen we have a ‘mergency.”
           
Ace whipped his head toward Pritchard.  “Thursday?  Like once-a-week Thursday?”
           
“This ain’t a hospital, mister.”  Pritchard’s lower lip was starting to tremble.  She had confused his incredulity for anger.
           
“Tomorrow’s Thursday, right?”
           
“Uh huh.”
           
“What time tomorrow?”
           
“He usually get to us about eleven, maybe a little after.”
           
Ace looked at his watch. “Shit.”
           
“What I do now?”
           
“Pritchard, take it easy.  You didn’t do anything.  C’mon.  It’s just that there’s this damn list and I’m not on it.  I can’t stay past ten.”
           
“Frenchy.” She sniffed.  “Don’t nobody call me Pritchard.”
           
“Huh?”  It was Ace’s turn to be a little confused.
           
“You gonna be hangin’ round here you might as well call me by my right name.”
           
Ace allowed himself a small smile.  He’d finally made a friend.  “Frenchy.  And I’m not mister, I’m Ace.  I’ll figure out something with the doctor.  He local?”
           
“Nuh uh.  Thursday doctor come up from Hot Springs, from the hospital.  Doc Thicksten only come out when we got a ‘mergency or somebody die.”
           
“Okay.  I’ll get a handle on it.  You go on back to your magazine, Frenchy.  I want to sit with Granny for a while.”

*