Where Love Has Gone (1962)

by Robbins, Harold

  “Colonel Carey?” the attractive young blonde asked.

  I nodded.

  “Mr. Corwin will see you now. Please follow me.”

  I got to my feet. This girl knew what she looked like going away and she made the most of it. It was the first pleasant thing that had happened to me all day. It was even better than the magazine.

  “Thank you,” I said as I went through the door she held open for me.

  Sam’s office was like outside, only more so. Fruitwood paneling. Two Matisses with lots of color; one sloe-eyed Modigliani with a wonderful almondy tone; a Picasso that I thought had been hung upside down. And Nora’s bronze casting—Woman in the Net—that had won her the Eliofheim Award, standing on a small pedestal in the corner with a single bright spot shining down on it.

  Sam entered from another door on the far wall. He came toward me, his hand outstretched. “Luke.”

  I took his hand. I liked the way he shook hands. Firm, but effusive or overfriendly. I appreciated it. “How are you, Sam?”

  “Fair enough. Losing a little hair but that’s about all.” He looked at me. “You look well.”

  “The good life,” I said. “That and the right woman.”

  “I’m glad.” He walked around behind his desk. “Sit down, Luke.”

  I slipped into the chair opposite him.

  “I was shocked to hear about Dani.”

  I didn’t say anything but I thought he meant it.

  “I liked the kid,” he said. “She was a sweet child. I’m sorry this had to happen to her. It was almost as if it were bound to happen though.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Nora.”

  “Did you know Riccio?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He smiled but it was a twisted sort of smile. “I was the one who introduced them.”

  “How did that happen?”

  He laughed. “You saw my boys?”

  “The Vandykes and the coats?”

  He nodded.

  “I sure did. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see your secretary.”

  He laughed again. “It’s Scaasi’s idea. Out here it’s mostly women who buy art. It works pretty good.”

  “How does that lead to Riccio?”

  “When I opened this place five years ago, he was number-one boy. He was very good too. Women adored him.”

  “Vandyke and all?”

  “It goes with the all-arty look,” he said. “Sort of well-groomed beatnik.”

  “I see.”

  “So did Nora,” Sam said wryly. “He wore Italian style trousers—tight around the crotch, like a ballet dancer’s. Nora couldn’t keep her eyes off him.” He opened a cigarette box on his desk and pushed it toward me. “And you know how that is. It’s like the song. What Nora wants, Nora gets.” His eyes met mine candidly. “Only this time I think Nora got more than she bargained for.”

  “Brighten my day,” I said, taking a cigarette. “What do you mean?”

  “He was as bad as she was. He’d bang anything that walked. A couple of times he almost got into trouble with customers but he always managed to weasel his way out.”

  “Why did you keep him?”

  “He was good. The best salesman we ever had. And he knew his stuff.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  Sam peered at me. “Why all the questions about Riccio?”

  “I want to know something about him,” I said. “Nobody else seems to. I thought if I did, maybe I could convince the court it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.”

  “I see,” he nodded slowly. “It’s reaching. But it might help.”

  “That’s what I think. What do you know about him? Did he have any special friends you might remember?”

  He thought for a moment, then picked up the telephone on his desk. “Bring in the personnel file on Tony Riccio.”

  A moment later the door opened and Sam’s secretary came in. She placed the file in front of him, looked at me and then walked out. I noticed Sam’s eyes following her.

  “Healthy,” I said. “Very healthy. I don’t think I could have taken the shock if you’d turned fruit.”

  He laughed and opened the file. “Tony worked for Arlene Gately before he worked for me. He came over here when she did.”

  “Does she still work for you?”

  “She died two years ago. In a plane crash.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What about his friends?”

  “I can’t remember any. He concentrated on dames. I never heard of his being real buddy with any man.”

  “How about his family then?”

  “They’re here in San Francisco. His father has a fish stand on the Wharf. I think his brothers own a boat.

  “Do you have their address?”

  He pulled a buck slip toward him and wrote an address on it. I took the slip of paper.

  “I wish I could think of something more.”

  “There is something,” I said. “But you don’t have to tell if me you don’t want to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nora and Riccio. Mrs. Hayden told me you clubbed her into a statement. How did you manage it?”

  He hesitated a moment. “I knew what was going on. It was just a question of time before I got photographs. She squawked but she settled.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  He shook his head. “I gave them to her when the decree became final. I didn’t want any part of them. I had enough to remember.

  I didn’t speak.

  He looked at me. “It was a fair settlement. I didn’t touch anything that was really hers. We only split what we made together.

  “I’m not criticizing.”

  “I hope you can do something. I keep remembering Dani when she was a little girl. She was kind of lost there for a while after you stopped seeing her.”

  “I didn’t want to,” I said. “Nora fixed that.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said in a surprised voice. “Nora told me that one day you just decided you weren’t going to come around anymore.”

  I stared at him. “That sounds like Nora.”

  “You know, I thought I knew everything but—” He ground his cigarette out and lit another. “There was one thing I’ll never forget.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It happened about five years ago. Dani was almost ten and said something about wanting a birthday party. Nora went through the roof. She told the kid to stop emphasizing her age, that she was enough to realize that if she went around talking about her age it would be very embarrassing to her mother. Dani didn’t understand, so she looked up at Nora and asked, ‘Don’t you want me to grow up, Mommy?’ Nora started to answer, then she saw me watching her and she walked away, leaving the kid standing there with a hurt expression on her face.”

  He dragged on the cigarette. “I honestly believe Nora was jealous of Dani. Of her youth, of her growing up. Of everything about her. But there was nothing I could do about it. Nora always made it very clear to me that I wasn’t her father and had no right to interfere.”

  He looked down at his desk for a moment, then up at me. “I suppose you’re wondering why, with everything I knew about her, I married her?”

  “I thought about it a couple of times.”

  “Maybe you won’t understand it,” he said quietly. “I was art critic on a small-town paper. No matter what they say, in the art world San Francisco is small town. I discovered something great. That happens maybe once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. But only if you’re lucky. I discovered Nora Hayden, and whatever else she is, in her own field she’s one of the greats. What she does with sculpture is the truth. So much truth that you don’t stop to think that she uses it all up in her work and has nothing left for herself or anyone else as a human being.

  “I knew what she was like. But I thought I could change her. I thought I could make some of that truth that I saw in her work apply to her own life. But I was wrong. I was comp
letely wrong.

  “What I didn’t see was that the only truth she’s capable of is in her work. Nothing else, no one else, matters. And there was one other ting.”

  “What was that, Sam?”

  He looked at me. “I loved her,” he said simply. Then he smiled grimly. “But look where love has gone. I’ve got nothing to show for it but some pictures on the wall and a couple of statues. But you’ve got something. No matter how bad it looks right now, you’ll always have something to show you where love has gone.”

  I knew what he meant. I got to my feet. “You’ve been more than kind, Sam.”

  He rose also. “I’d like to send Dani a little something. Do you think it would be all right?”

  “I’m sure she’d like that, Sam.”

  He held out his hand. “Give her my love.”

  “I will, Sam,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Post Street was bustling with afternoon shoppers and the sunlight beat at my eyes after the sheltered cool dimness inside the gallery. I felt the sweat come out of my skin inside my clothing and I headed for the coolness of a bar. I ordered a bottle of beer. A couple of tourists came in and stood beside me. They ordered beer too.

  “Jesus, it’s hot,” one of them said.

  “It sure is, man,” said the other as he lifted the foaming glass to his lips. “But think how much hotter it is for them poor guys out there on that rock in the middle of the bay. I bet they’d give anything for a cool beer on a day like this.”

  I glanced at them and thought of the rock they were talking about. Alcatraz. There were other rocks too. My daughter was on one of her own. And she was just a kid.

  I wondered what she was doing to keep cool in this bright mid-afternoon heat. I wondered what Miss Spicer was finding out about her. Things, probably, I’d never know. Never could know.

  5

  __________________________________________

  Marian Spicer recognized the shoes even before she heard the voice. They were so highly polished that she could almost see her face in them, though she knew that if the foot were raised, the upper would come slightly away so the white yarn of the socks would show. She raised her head from the notes spread out on the table.

  “Ah! Would it be the good maid Marian come to play with Robin Hood and whilst away the time in some shaded dell of Sherwood Forest the hotted afternoon?”

  She coughed. “Sit down, Red, before you spill your coffee all over my work papers. It’s a good thing I know you. Even the Sheriff of Nottingham wouldn’t understand English the way you speak it.”

  He stood there grinning his blue eyes crinkled and his red hair tousled as usual. He had two cups of coffee, one in either hand. “You looked about ready for a refill,” he said, putting one down in front of her.

  “Thanks.”

  He looked around the cafeteria. It was almost empty. “Something drastic will have to be done. The employees aren’t taking proper advantage of their coffee break.”

  At one of the other tables a probation officer sat with a girl and her mother. The girl was about fifteen, pregnant and sullen. The girl’s mother was talking a blue streak to the probation officer, who was nodding her head patiently.

  Marian could guess what the woman was saying. She’d heard the same thing so many times before. “I didn’t know—I never suspected … My own daughter … It was those kids she—”

  It was always the same thing. Children got into trouble and parents were always surprised. Of course they never saw it coming. They were always too busy with other things. Some of them were valid, others were not, but it all added up to the same thing—Juvenile Court.

  “Where’ve you been all day?” she asked, gathering her papers into a neat stack.

  Red sipped noisily at his coffee. “Where do you think? Out looking for that lousy little fag.”

  Marian knew whom he meant—a sixteen-year-old boy whose parents had shipped him off to military school to make a man of him after he had turned up in a police dragnet about six months ago. Four days later they’d called to report he was missing from school. “Did you find him?”

  “I found him. Right where we thought he’d be. In the men’s room of a swish bar on North Beach.”

  “I don’t see why that should have taken you four days.”

  “Do you know how many of those joints there are?” he asked indignantly. Then he saw her smile and eased back in his chair. “You should have seen the kid when I found him. He was still wearing his school uniform. It looked like he’d slept in it the whole four days. When he saw me he went hysterical. Kicking and screaming and scratching. I had to get a radio car to help me bring him in.” He looked at her and grinned mischievously. “Even at that, I didn’t do so bad today. I managed to get propositioned five times and one of them was a woman. Out there that’s an achievement. She must have thought I was real queer.”

  “Did you notify his parents?”

  Red nodded. “They’ll be in tomorrow.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s life. Boys will be girls.”

  “Poor kid.” That was the one kind of case none of them liked. They felt so completely useless. There was nothing they could really do that was constructive. The only thing they could do was to turn it over to the psychiatrists. And there were times, she felt, when even they were helpless.

  “You’re a busy little bee. What are you working on? The Hayden case?”

  “The girl’s name is Carey.”

  “I know that. But all the papers call it the Hayden case. After the mother, who is pumpkins in this town.” He took another noisy sip of his coffee. “What’s with the kid?”

  Marian looked at him speculatively. “I don’t really know. I haven’t been able to figure her out yet. She doesn’t fit in like most of the other children I’ve come across.”

  He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “She’s even got you going has she? Those the preliminary reports?”

  She nodded.

  “Let me take a look.”

  She watched him read the top page. It was the report of the examining physician. Every girl who was brought in was given a thorough physical before being sent to the cottages. Dani had had hers last Saturday, but the psychometric evaluations hadn’t been processed until Monday, because that office was closed on the weekend.

  Marian had the feeling that somewhere along the line they were missing something very important about the child, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. But Red was really very good. He’d been a probation officer for many years. Maybe he could come up with the something that would help.

  He finished reading the medical report and glanced at his cynically. “I’m glad to see that at least this kid is normal.”

  She knew what he was talking about. The hymeneal rupture is complete and the scar well healed and of indeterminate age. However, there are signs of irritation in the vaginal walls and a slight swelling of the clitoris, which indicates the probability of a high level of sexual activity during the period shortly preceding this examination.

  “I’m beginning to believe there are no fourteen-year-old virgins in San Francisco.” He looked at her and grinned. “Historically speaking, Marian, were you still a virgin at fourteen?”

  “Cut the jokes, Red. Don’t let this job distort your outlook. Nice kids seldom wind up here.”

  “Who was it? The guy she killed?”

  She stared at him. “She wouldn’t say. Whenever anyone asks about it, she clams up. Doesn’t talk, doesn’t say anything. Read the psychometric and see for yourself.”

  She saw his eyebrows shoot up as he reached the middle of the page. She knew about that too.

  “The kid has an I.Q. of 152.”

  “That’s right. We’re dealing with an extraordinary level of intelligence and perception. That’s what makes it so hard to understand what follows. Read it.”

  He continued on silently. He went through the next few pages rapidly and then put the report down. “She’s playing with us. I don’t get it. Why?”

/>   “That’s exactly what I feel. Did you read what she told the psychiatrist at the end of their session? That she freely admitted doing wrong, that she realizes she shouldn’t have done it, that she is perfectly willing to discuss anything that pertains to her wrongdoing, but is not interested in discussing anything more than that. The rest of her life is both personal and private and she does not feel impelled to reveal anything about it because it is not pertinent to what she did.”

  “That’s quite a mouthful.”

  Marian nodded. “Somewhere over this weekend she regained control of herself. Too bad we couldn’t have got to her when she came in Saturday. She was upset and nervous then.”

  “Do you think anyone fed her that line?”

  “The only one she saw was her father. He’d never think of it. To him she’s still a little girl. The last time he saw her she was about eight years old, and while he realizes that she’s bigger, I don’t think he’s got it clear yet that she’s any older.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He seems like a nice gentleman.”

  “With that war record?” Red’s voice was incredulous.

  “That’s the paradox. But I feel sorry for the poor guy. It’s obvious from his clothes that he’s not too well off, yet he came all the way out from Chicago to see if he could help. His wife is back there expecting a baby any day and he’s being pulled in both directions. He wants to do right but he’s not that sure that he knows what right is.”

  “What’s Miss Hayden like?”

  “Nora Hayden knows what she wants. All the time. She may be an important artist but she’s also a real bitch. I feel sorry for the kid, having to live with her all these years. It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “I guess you don’t like her.”

  “I guess I don’t. But that doesn’t alter the basic problem. How do we reach this kid and get her to open up?”

  “Sometimes the best thing to do is to leave them alone. Maybe when she gets to trust us a little more she’ll see we want to help, and she’ll come around.”

  “That might work if we had the time. But Murphy only gave us until next week. I’ve got the feeling there’s a lot of pressure on him to clean this up quickly and he’s not going to let it go over the legal limit of fifteen days.”