Where Love Has Gone (1962)

by Robbins, Harold

  I took a deep breath. “Nora,” I began, “at the coroner’s inquest last week you testified that you had been quarreling with Tony Riccio the day he was killed. Can you tell us what time those quarrels began?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Approximately. Was it eight o’clock in the morning? Ten? Twelve? Two in the afternoon?”

  I could see the light dawn in her eyes. She knew what I was getting at. “It’s difficult for me to say exactly.”

  “Perhaps I could help you refresh your memory,” I said. “You were in Los Angeles all day Thursday. Western Airlines tells me that you were listed on their passenger manifest on the flight from Los Angeles that arrived in San Francisco at ten minutes after four on Friday afternoon. Allowing for reasonable traffic delays, you would have been home at, say, five o’clock. Was that about the time the quarrel began?”

  Her eyes began to turn cold and angry. “About that time.”

  “So the quarrel you referred to did not go on all day but began at approximately five o’clock in the afternoon? Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Gordon was up again like a jack-in-the-box. “Your Honor,” he said, “I fail to—”

  “Mr. Gordon!” The judge’s voice crackled angrily. “Please refrain from further interruptions in this court! As the attorney ostensibly representing the minor appearing before this court you should welcome any information that might shed light on her actions and aid in her defense. It is beginning to appear to this court that you are trying to serve too many masters and prejudging too many facts. Let me reiterate that I am the judge in this court and that you will have every opportunity to give voice to your opinions in due course. Now, please resume your seat.”

  Gordon sat down. His face was almost purple with rage. The judge turned back to me. “Please continue, Colonel Carey.”

  “Was anyone at home when you arrived there?” I asked.

  For the first time Nora hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Were any of the servants at home?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Was Dani or Tony Riccio there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Both of them.”

  “Did you see them when you came in?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I went directly to the studio. I wanted to sketch out some ideas I had before I lost them.”

  “What time did you finally see them?”

  She looked at me. For the first time I saw a look of pleading come into her eyes. She seemed to be begging me to stop.

  “What time?” I repeated coldly.

  “About—about seven thirty.”

  “Then the quarrel didn’t begin until seven thirty, not five o’clock?” I asked.

  She looked down at her hands. “That’s right.”

  “You also testified at the coroner’s inquest that your quarrel with Tony Riccio was over business matters,” I said. “That wasn’t the real reason, was it?”

  “No.”

  “And when you told Miss Spicer that you didn’t know about Dani’s affair with Riccio,” I said, “that wasn’t the truth either, was it?”

  She began to cry silently, the tears gathering on the lower lids and rolling down her cheeks. Her hands began to twist nervously. “No.”

  “Where did you see them?”

  “When I went upstairs to change for dinner,” she half-whispered.

  “Where, not when. In what room?”

  She didn’t look up. “In Rick’s room.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “They were—” Her voice was shorn of all feeling. Her eyes were dull and glazed. “They were in bed.”

  I looked at her. “Why didn’t you say so at the inquest?”

  “It was bad enough the way it was,” she whispered. “I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think!” I interrupted angrily. “That’s just it. You did think. You knew if you told that much you would have to tell the whole truth. About everything that happened that night!”

  “I—I don’t understand,” she said, a puzzled, frightened look in her eyes.

  “You understand!” I said brutally. “I don’t know how you got Dani to agree to it, but you knew if you told the truth, the rest of it could not be kept silent … that you were the one who stabbed Tony Riccio, not Dani!”

  I could see her grow old before my eyes. Her face froze and lines came into it that I’d never seen before.

  Then a scream came from behind me. “No, Mommy. No! He can’t make you say that you did!”

  I half turned toward Dani but she was already out of her chair and running to her mother. She hugged Nora to her and stood there with her arms around her protectively. The tears were still running down Nora’s cheeks but Dani’s eyes were flashing anger and hatred at me.

  “You think you know a lot!” she shouted. “You come back after all these years and you think you know everything. You’re a stranger. Nothing but a stranger. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. All we know about each other is our names!”

  I stared at her. “But, Dani—”

  “I told you the truth!” she cried. “But you wouldn’t believe me! I told you it was an accident, that I didn’t mean it, but you didn’t believe me. You hated my mother so much that you wouldn’t listen!

  “You want to hear the truth so much, Daddy, then listen to it! It wasn’t Rick that I tried to kill that night in the studio. It was my mother!”

  4

  __________________________________________

  I looked around the court. The room was deathly still. Everyone was watching Dani. Even the court stenographer, whose face had been imperturbable all morning, his eyes gazing unseeingly into space as his fingers flew rapidly over the keys of the stenotype.

  “We were in Rick’s bed with Mother found us,” she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “We knew that it was late but I wouldn’t leave him. He wanted me to go but I wouldn’t. We didn’t hear anything so we thought we were still alone. We’d been in bed for almost two days, except for meals, ever since the servants left. And still I didn’t want to go.”

  The defiant look came into her eyes that I’d learned to recognize. “Would you like to know what we were doing when Mother found us, Daddy?” she asked. “Would you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “We were both naked in bed. He was lying down and I was on my hands and knees. Do you know what I mean, Daddy? I was trying to make it so he’d want me again and I wouldn’t have to go.”

  I began to feel sick inside. It must have shown on my face, because the defiance crept into her voice now.

  “You know what I mean, Daddy, don’t you!” she said softly. “But you don’t like to think it. Not even to yourself. You still like to think that I’m the same little girl you left six years ago. Well, I’m not. You don’t like to think that I know about such things—all the ways there are to do it. But I do. You don’t like to think that your little girl would do all those things. But I did.”

  Her voice began to rise slightly and a faint hint of tears came into her eyes. “And I did them over and over and over. As many times as I could!”

  She was staring into my eyes and the knots in my stomach were growing tighter and tighter. “You don’t like to hear that, do you, Daddy?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  “Mother came in through your old room. Remember how you used to come from your room into mine? That was the way she came. Only that room is Rick’s now—was Rick’s. She pulled me off the bed and dragged me down the hall to my room and locked me in. I was crying. I told her Rick and I were going to get married, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I’d never seen her so angry before.

  “Then she went downstairs to the studio and I stayed on the bed until I heard Rick’s door open. I heard his footsteps on the staircase and I knew that he was going down to talk to her. I got dressed as quickly as
I could and I left my room through the bathroom, which Mother had forgotten to lock.

  “I crept downstairs as silently as I could. I heard Charles and Violet in the kitchen, on the other side of the house. Then I stole down the hallway and stood outside the studio door, listening. I could hear almost every word they said.

  “I heard Mother tell Rick he had just one hour to get out of the house. Then Rick said that he had enough on both of us to tell the whole world what whores we were. Mother told him that if he didn’t leave he’d wind up in jail for—” she stumbled over the word—“statutory rape.”

  There was a rustle in the court.

  “I heard Mother laugh then, and say that she’d expected something like that from him, how much did he want? And Tony laughed too. That was more like it, he said. Fifty thousand dollars. Mother told him he was crazy, that ten thousand dollars was all she’d give him. Twenty-five then, he said. ‘All right,’ I heard Mother say. And then I went crazy!”

  The tears came into her eyes and began to spill down her cheeks. “I went real crazy! All I could think of was that she was doing it again. The same thing she did with everybody that I liked. The same thing she did with everyone who liked me. She was sending Tony away!

  “I pushed open the door and screamed at her. ‘You can’t do it,’ I screamed. ‘You can’t send him away!’ Mother looked at me and told me to go back upstairs to my room. I looked at Rick and he told me to do what my mother said.

  “Then I noticed the chisel on the table near the door. I picked it up and ran at Mother. ‘You can’t send him away,’ I shouted. ‘I’ll kill you first!’

  “I raised my arm and struck at Mother, but like from nowhere Rick was suddenly between us, the chisel sticking out of his stomach. He stood there, put his hands to his stomach. ‘Jesus Christ, Dani, why did you have to go and do a stupid thing like that?’ he said. Then I saw the blood coming out between his fingers and I ran past him to Mother screaming. ‘I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t mean to do it, Mommy!’

  “‘I know you didn’t, baby,’ she said softly, over and over. ‘I know you didn’t mean it.’

  “She said we’d tell everyone that he had been hurting her, and that I’d done it to protect her. Then nobody need ever know what went on between Tony and me. She told me over and over, to make sure that I’d say the same things. Then I covered my face with my hands and the door opened and Charles came in.”

  They were clinging together now, both crying. I stared at them. It was almost like looking at a stereopticon slide without the viewer. Like two separate pictures of the same person. They looked so much alike, the same tears rolling down their cheeks. Mother and daughter. One and the same.

  It was almost as if I were mesmerized. Then, suddenly, it seemed as if the spell were broken. Dani’s eyes were dry now, though Nora still wept.

  “Now that you know the truth, Daddy,” she asked quietly, “do you feel better?’

  I looked deep into her eyes. I don’t know what it was I saw there, but the knots in my stomach disappeared. I knew the truth. I don’t know how I knew it, because she still hadn’t told it, but it didn’t really matter now. Because this was the way Dani wanted it. Because this was the way it would have to be. And because I still knew deep inside that she hadn’t committed a murder.

  The judge ordered a ten-minute recess. When he came back into the courtroom we all sat quietly while he gave his decision.

  “It is the decision of this court that the State of California retain custody of the minor, Danielle Nora Corey, as recommended in the petition by the Probation Department. Therefore she is hereby remanded to the custody of the California Youth Authority and will be delivered by the probation officer to them at the Northern California Reception Center at Perkins, California, for the standard diagnostic period of six weeks. Then, at the end of that time, and with their agreement, she will be transferred to Los Guilicos School at Santa Rosa, California, where she will undergo rehabilitation as proscribed for a period of not less than six months. At that time the court will consider the petition to remand her into the custody of the maternal grandmother which is now must reluctantly deny.

  “The minor, Danielle Nora Carey, is hereby declared a ward of the State of California until she reaches the legal age of eighteen or until she is so discharged by this court. The parents of this minor are hereby instructed to make arrangements with the Probation Department to pay to the State of California the sum of forty dollars per month for each month the minor remains in custody of the State.”

  The judge rapped the desk with the gavel, then turned to Dani. “Los Guilicos, Danielle, is a very fine school, and if you behave yourself and show that you are making every effort to redeem yourself, you will have nothing to fear. If you cooperate with them, they will cooperate with you and try to return you to your home as soon as possible.”

  We all rose and he passed majestically into his chambers.

  “You will be able to visit Dani tomorrow,” Miss Spicer said as she led Dani to the door and opened it. Dani looked back at us for a moment, then went through. The door closed.

  Nora began to cry. Dr. Weidman put an arm about her and she leaned her head against his shoulder as they started out.

  Gordon came over to me. He was smiling. “Well, it didn’t turn out so badly after all.”

  I stared at him.

  He looked at me sharply. “He could have put her in custody of the state the full time, until she was eighteen. This way there’s a good chance she’ll be out in six to eight months.”

  I didn’t answer as he walked after Nora.

  Then an old hand pressed against mine. The old lady looked into my eyes. There was an understanding in her own. “Thank you for everything you tried to do, Luke,” she said gently. “I’ll try to take care of her when she comes home.”

  “I know you will, Mrs. Hayden. I’m sorry. About Nora, I mean.”

  “It’s all over now, Luke. We all did everything we could. Goodbye. And good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  She went on out into the corridor. I looked up the staircase. They had all disappeared. I hesitated just a moment, then went down the corridor and around the hallway to the girls’ probation office.

  Miss Spicer was at her desk when I got there.

  “I have to go back to Chicago this afternoon,” I said. “Could I see Dani now instead of tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see if Dani wants to see you,” she said politely and left the office.

  I just had enough time to light a cigarette before she was back with Dani. “You can talk in here,” she said. “I’ll wait outside.”

  The door closed behind her. I held out my arms and my daughter came into them. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said.

  “It’s all right, Dani,” I said softly. “It took me a long time to get it, but now I understand.”

  She looked up into my face. “You don’t hate her so much that you’d want to see her in the gas chamber, do you?”

  “No, Dani,” I said. “I don’t hate her at all now. Not anymore. I used to be afraid of her but now I just feel sorry for her.”

  “She’s always got to have somebody who loves her more than anyone else, Daddy. Everybody does. You have your wife. She loves you more than anyone else.”

  “And your mother has you, Dani.”

  Her eyes were suddenly shining. “Someday maybe you can come and visit me. Or I can come and visit you.”

  “Someday,” I said.

  The door opened. “I’m sorry, Dani, but the time is up.”

  Dani reached up and kissed me on the cheek. “You’ll write to me, Daddy?”

  I kissed her forehead. “I’ll write to you, baby.”

  I watched her walk down the hall, her tiny heels with their metal taps clicking against the floor. Then they turned a corner and Dani was gone.

  Goodbye, Dani. Goodbye, my little red-faced baby. I remember the day you were born. I remember how I looked inside the glass window and you wrinkle
d up your tiny face and cried and how I was all busted and fractured inside because I knew that you were mine and I was yours and you were the most wonderful baby in the world.

  Wherever love has gone, it goes with you.

  It was nine thirty that night when the big jet touched down at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The cool air came rushing into the cabin as the door sprang open. I was the first one off. I had no time to be polite. I wondered if Elizabeth had gotten my wire.

  I almost ran across the field to the unfinished arrival building. I didn’t see her at first, there were so many people around. Then I did, waving and smiling and crying all at once.

  I ran to her and the world stopped shaking, the pains all vanished. I held her very close. “I love you and I missed you,” I said. “And I missed you and I love you.”

  Then we went over and I picked up my bag and we went out to the car. I opened the rear door to put in my luggage and saw another bag there. I turned to her.

  She grinned at me. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? We have to go to the hospital from here.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Now!”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I yelled. “Instead of wasting all that time. Hurry! Get into the car!”

  “You don’t have to rush. There’s time yet. The pains are only coming about once every hour.” She looked up at the big electric Benrus over the parking lot entrance. “As a matter of fact, there should be one right about now.”

  “Don’t stand there then!” I shouted. “Get into the car.”

  She just sat down when it hit her. I saw her face to white and tense, then it passed and her color came flooding back. “See, it wasn’t so bad.”

  We made it to St. Joseph’s in nothing flat. The police must all have been out to dinner.

  We went in and they took her right upstairs. Fifteen minutes later she was on the rolling table and they were shipping her up to the labor room.

  I stood in front of the elevator and looked down at her. Her face was pale but she was smiling. “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “We Swedes don’t make trouble. We just make babies.”