Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

“She looks like she might’ve been a tiger in her day,” I allowed.

“In her day, hell. The sun set on her day years ago, and she’s still a tiger. I could tell you some tales about Arlene, I could.” He took a big gulp of milk from a tumbler beside his plate. “Care for some cow juice?” he asked.

“No, thanks.” I jerked my thumb toward the street. “Arlene says you used to own the bar.”

“I did. Built it with my own two hands in the summer a ’53.” He rapped his knuckles against his right temple. “Thanks to a Chinese hand grenade, the army had to stick a steel plate in my noggin. I’d been out of the hospital about six months, but I was still gettin’ dizzy spells every time I had ta climb the damned ladder.” He looked down at the bar. “I got her built, though,” he said. “I surely did.” He reached a hoary hand up and wiped the mayonnaise from his chin, then sucked it from his finger. “Sold out in ’82, but I moved in here so I could keep an eye on the place.” He directed a wistful gaze out the window. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“Do you remember a time, Mr. Heath, in the late ’60s when a man named Tragovic was murdered outside the bar?”

“Sure, I remember.”

“What can you tell me about that?”

He shook his head. “Not much to tell, really. Tragovic was just this runt who used to hang around; that’s all. I never liked him. No one did.”

“Do you remember seeing him the night of the murder?”

“Boy, you’re goin’ back a ways.” He popped the last of the baloney sandwich into his mouth and continued talking without slowing down. “‘Bout all I remember is someone found the body, and when the ambulance arrived, all my customers headed out to watch ’em load Tragovic up. That was maybe an hour before closing time. Once the ambulance left, everybody filed back in. I ended up selling more drinks in that last hour than I ever sold in an hour’s time before or since. I reckon death tends to make folks thirsty.”

“Was Tragovic talking to anyone that night that you recall — maybe involved in some kind of an argument with a sailor?”

He dug his pinky into his ear and then gave a close inspection to whatever it was he fished out. “I remember the cops asking me that same question the next day. From what I heard, there was some winos sharing a bottle on the street corner who said they had seen a sailor beatin’ the hell out of some guy in the alley out back. But, no, I never knew anything was going on. Fights’d happen from time to time. That was just the nature of the business. Hell, sailors were in and out a lot, ‘specially then what with Vietnam and all.”

“I understand Tragovic was married.”

“Yep, he was. His wife came in some, not much, though. She wasn’t old enough to drink, which is just as well. Tragovic was the sort of fella who’d use what little drinking money they had on hisself, I’m sure. I don’t recall much about her, ’cept she was a mousey little thing. Pretty, I think, but timid, like.”

“Whatever became of her? Do you know?”

He gave his head a slow shake. “I’ve got no idea.” He peered again through the window. “She’s just one a the many that came and went.” A somber cast settled across the old man’s brow. “There was thousands of ’em I knew over the years,” he said. “Thousands.” After a bit, he cleared his throat and turned back to me. With a frown he added, “I don’t even remember her name.”

“Marlee,” I said.

“Was that it? Hell, you coulda fooled me. I do remember she had a couplea brothers who were regulars for a while there. Likable fellas, too, as I recall.”

“Do you remember their names?”

He scratched the spot where the army had installed the steel plate. “Boy,” he said, “you make a fella shake the dust off, don’t ya?”

“Anything you could remember would help.”

He pondered it for a moment, then the edges of his mouth crinkled into a smile. “Abbott and Costello,” he said.

“Abbott and Costello?”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone used to call ’em ’cause their real names was Bud and Lou. Get it? Abbott and Costello.”

I nodded. “Sure, I get it. The old comedy team. Do you remember a last name?”

“A last name, huh? Now that’s tougher, ain’t it?” He gave a long pause, then turned to face me with a sly look on his face. I started to dig into my pocket for another one of the twenties that had worked so well on Arlene across the street. Before I could pull it out, though, Heath smiled and said, “I don’t want your money.” He then told me the name, and when he did, I realized his long pause was just an old bartender’s skill at building a little suspense. He was a man who had shared thousands of chats over the years, and he knew how to make a conversation interesting. “Bickman,” he said. “Bud and Lou Bickman. If you don’t mind me askin’, why is it that you are rummaging around so deep in the long ago?”

I shrugged. “I’m just trying to do a favor for a friend.”

“A friend,” he said, and with a nod, he added, “That’s good.”

Even though some of what the old man said didn’t add up, it was clear he’d told me all he knew. I had to ask, anyway. “Is there anything else you can remember? I’d like to find Marlee, if I could.”

“Find her, huh? I expect the trail’s damned cold after thirty-five years.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “it is.”

“There’s nothin’ more I can tell you,” he said. “People come along, and then they’re gone. That’s just the way it works. You never see ’em again.”

I pushed away from the table and stood. “Well, thanks. Mr. Heath, you’ve been a lot of help. I appreciate it.”

“They come then go. That’s what they do — come and go.”

I let myself out, and just before I shut the apartment door, I thanked him again. I don’t think he heard me, though. He didn’t respond. He just sat there drinking his milk and staring out the window at the Silk Hat Lounge.

I called directory assistance on my cell phone. There was a Louis Bickman listed in El Cajon. I got both the address and phone number, but I decided to ride out rather than call. I fired up the Harley, made my way to the freeway, and headed east.

The Bickman residence was a small but tidy place on the outskirts of town. As I pushed the button for the doorbell, I thought I could hear the sound of a television game show coming from somewhere in the house, but no one answered, and I wrote a note saying if the Louis Bickman at this residence had a sister named Marlee, to please give me a call. I said I wished to discuss with her the death of her husband, Duane Tragovic. I gave my name, address, and phone number. I closed the note by writing, “This is an urgent matter. I need to speak to Mrs. Tragovic right away. Please call as soon as possible.”

I tucked the note into the Bickman mailbox, climbed on my bike, and headed home.

I noticed Al Bruun’s fax when I dropped the chopper’s keys onto my computer desk. It consisted of six pages that I could tell had been originally produced by a manual typewriter. Some of the letters were darker or slightly higher on the line than others. It was a nostalgic reminder of a less polished time. The light was flashing on the answering machine, so I pushed “play,” and as the tape rewound, I scanned the three-and-a-half-decade-old file on the homicide of Duane Tragovic.

“Hi-ya, Pry,” said the tinny voice that came from the answering machine’s speaker, “this is Al. I just faxed you what we had on that case you asked about. As you can see from the report, they didn’t have much. One of the bar patrons called for an ambulance, but the guy was dead when they showed up. A half-dozen winos had seen a sailor beating on someone earlier that evening. The uniformed boys interviewed as many of the winos as they could round up, but they didn’t get much info. Homicide detectives asked a few questions around the neighborhood over the course of the next day or so, but there were no leads. Tragovic had a wife. She was young, only seventeen years old, and apparently pretty hysterical over her husband’s killing. They questioned her, of course, but didn’t get much from her, either. She said she didn’t know any sailors, and as far as she knew, neither did her husband. They kept the file open, but there was nothing to go on, and it doesn’t look like they ever did much more with it. I sent along a copy of Tragovic’s rap sheet. You can tell by his record that he must have been a real sweetie-pie. I expect the guys doing the investigation knew him pretty well, and it doesn’t look like they killed themselves working the case. I also sent along the autopsy report. No surprises there. The mechanism of death was a fractured skull.