The Wright 3

by Blue Balliett

  A nightmare, that’s what this was. They had been so close to rescuing the house, and now something creepy and ugly had happened. Had the criminal broken in to steal the fish, or had he grabbed the fish not knowing what it was?

  Tommy told Calder that he and Petra shouldn’t tell their parents about the jade carving, not yet. He wanted his mom to be the first to know. Besides, Tommy had said to Calder on the phone, the Wright 3 needed to decide what to do.

  Petra liked the sound of that. But could they get the fish back themselves? It was a scary idea.

  Her bed wasn’t far from her window, and she looked out now, breathing in the lavender light. Ordinarily she loved this time of day at this time of year — the combination of crickets and tree frogs, a quiet sky, and the way shadows melted into the lush bloom of darkness behind houses and under trees. Storybook evenings.

  But not tonight.

  Something was wrong with this whole picture, very wrong. Petra could feel it. For one thing, there were too many coincidences.

  She tried to separate them out, but couldn’t. She decided to write. Abandoning the code, she sat with her back against the wall and pillows on either side of her. There: No I M could read over her shoulder now, and too bad if anyone else found the notebook.

  1. The Invisible Man: I found him, he feels real. Mrs. Sharpe mentioned the book. What was the invisible thing Wright left behind?

  2. The Threes: The house seemed to be telling me three at the same time Calder was building with three pentominoes. Calder picked F and L and W out of his pentominoes again and again … and the C and P and T pieces made the figure of a man. There is a man somewhere. But how can he be invisible?

  3. The Fish: Why did Tommy find a fish just like Frank Lloyd Wright’s talisman, but in the Japanese Garden? It’s a likely spot, but how could it have happened at just the right moment for the Robie House? Chance?

  4. The Art Institute: Why did Mr. Dare take Ms. Hussey to look for small Asian art objects and tell her that story? Does he know Tommy found something? Does she?

  For once, writing didn’t seem to make anything clear. If only the house itself could talk…. It could tell the kids who had broken into Tommy’s apartment. It could tell them what Wright would have wanted Tommy to do with that jade fish. It could help them.

  Petra closed her eyes and pictured the house sitting through almost a century of lavender evenings … through the green light of thunderstorms … through snows piled high on the ledges and balconies … through three families who loved it, and three families who laughed and also cried….

  What would you like us to do? she asked the house silently.

  A thin, silvery voice filled Petra’s mind:

  This house is me, it’s mine, and if it is torn apart I will be, too. I am one with every room, and travel with the light. I am sad, joyful, dangerous, playful, powerful, and fragile. If you trust me enough to listen to my message, I will speak.

  Was her mind making this up? No, it wasn’t! She had heard something outside of herself. I’m listening, she sent back. I’m listening!

  But there was only silence. Petra opened her eyes.

  What had just happened? Maybe it didn’t matter if she understood. She now felt sure of one thing, sure to the very bottom of her heart: There was something alive in that building.

  Sitting in Moon Palace, Tommy and his mom watched three giant carp swimming in a tank the size of a bathtub by the front door. His mom had been right: It was a relief to get away from the apartment tonight.

  “I wonder how big Goldman will get,” Tommy mused.

  “Are you going to have a carp pool when you’re rich and famous?” his mom asked with a smile.

  “Absolutely,” Tommy answered.

  Then they talked about day trips they might want to take that summer, about going to look at some of the other houses Frank Lloyd Wright had built in Chicago, and about movies to rent. After egg rolls, orange chicken, broccoli and pea pods, Tommy cracked open his fortune cookie. He read:

  Don’t give up.

  In darkness, much work can be accomplished.

  What? He stuffed the fortune deep in his pocket. “What’s yours, Mom?” he asked, seeing his mother frown as she chewed her cookie.

  “Something about ‘watch out for neighbors who use their blinds,’” she said.

  “No blinds in the Robie House,” Tommy said quickly. “Only in Rear Window.”

  “Right.” His mom patted his shoulder.

  When they stepped out of the restaurant, Tommy was shocked to see the man with black glasses ducking into an antiques store across the street.

  First Tommy had seen him on the train this morning and now here? Was this guy following him? He remembered his threatening words: I wouldn’t be so proud of myself if I was you. Could he have been the one who broke into their apartment? Did he have Tommy’s fish?

  Tommy dragged his mom back into Moon Palace and peered out the front of the restaurant through the fish tank.

  “What on earth —” she said.

  “It’s a man who works at the Robie House. He doesn’t like me, and I think he’s up to something.”

  “What?” Zelda Segovia asked, her voice now tight and anxious. “What is this about?”

  “Well, I think that guy is trying to scare us kids away from saving the Robie House. Remember there was all the newspaper stuff about our demonstration, and a group of important people are visiting soon, including the mayor. This worker probably wants to be sure we don’t pop up again and make more trouble.” Tommy’s mind was going a mile a minute. “Maybe that’s who wrecked our apartment, thinking he could make us move out. After all, Goldman and I have a number one lookout.”

  “That you do,” his mom said slowly. “But why should he be scared of a bunch of kids? And why do something so terrible to us?”

  “Well …” Tommy said again.

  “Have you been poking around the Robie House?” his mom asked.

  “Not really,” Tommy said, and sucked in his cheeks.

  “Tommy Segovia!” His mom’s voice was stern. “You are not to go near that place, do you hear me? That guy may be crazy, or may just hate kids.”

  Tommy nodded. But as they headed out the door, he memorized the name of the shop. It was Soo Long Antiques.

  Tommy wondered if the man had followed them from Hyde Park and allowed himself to be seen just to scare Tommy and get him offtrack.

  Well, he’d find it wasn’t that easy. Carp who become dragons swim upstream, Tommy reminded himself. If Wright could do it, he could do it.

  Remembering what to say to whom was getting complicated: Calder and Petra knew one part of the story, and his mom now knew another. He wasn’t sure how much Ms. Hussey or Mr. Dare knew. Goldman, witness and listener, probably knew the most.

  Goldman would help him navigate.

  The temperature rose that evening. By the time Tommy turned out his light, it was over ninety degrees. He insisted that he keep Goldman and his bed by the window, so his mom bought and installed hardware-store shades that night.

  “I don’t care how hot it is or what my fortune cookie told me,” she said. “I won’t have anyone looking in our windows.”

  As soon as his mom had said good night, Tommy gently pulled up his shade. Propped on his elbows, he peered out at the Robie House.

  Talk to me, he said silently to the house. Tell me who has the fish. If only you could talk.

  A lone seagull cawed overhead. Two people walked by on Woodlawn Avenue, their heels clicking cheerfully on the sidewalk. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and light flashed and glimmered on Wright’s magical glass. At night the triangles always seemed to stand out, and Tommy wondered what kind of a code Wright could possibly have left behind. Certainly not the Wright Sandwich Code, he smiled to himself. If only he and Calder and Petra could get inside to look.

  Just then he saw something moving in the shadows on the side of the house. A dog? He peeked around the side of Goldman’s bowl t
o get a better look.

  He saw two figures dressed in dark clothing. Tommy could now hear whispering. They crouched in the bushes, out of sight of the street, until it was absolutely quiet: no cars coming, no sounds of people. Then one of them pulled a ladder out from where they were hiding and placed it expertly, at just the right height, under a second-floor window.

  Moving Goldman’s bowl gently to one side, Tommy knocked two batteries off his windowsill and they fell to the bare floor with a nasty metallic clatter. The figures stopped moving and looked toward his building.

  Not knowing how much they could see, Tommy ducked back on his bed. A moment later a flashlight beam combed his window screen, pausing momentarily on Goldman’s bowl. He realized then that the water in the bowl was still sloshing.

  “Stay still!” he whispered to Goldman.

  He counted to fifty. Cautiously, he looked out again. The ladder was back on the ground, and the figures had vanished. Were they in the house?

  Stretching out with his chin on the windowsill, he watched and waited. He could hear faint sounds of clinking and scraping, but he saw no lights through the dark windows.

  What had his fortune cookie said? Something about not giving up, and working in the dark. His heart pounding, he slipped out of bed and reached for shorts and a T-shirt. His mom’s breathing was deep and even — she wouldn’t wake up.

  The new lock on the front door was silent, and Tommy eased it open ever so slowly. Under the light of a red emergency bulb, he padded down the stairs in bare feet. Outside the front door the air felt sweet and full, and the street was frighteningly quiet.

  Creeping around the corner of his apartment building, he stayed as close to the ground as possible. When he was under his own window, he lay down in a flower bed and waited.

  No one walked by, and time was marked only by distant sirens and the occasional movement of a cloud in front of the moon. The earth felt deliciously cool beneath his belly, and he was just starting to feel sleepy and relaxed when a sharp sparkle of light, zipping sideways across the Wright windows, caught one of the segments of glass. A triangle of gold floated above the flat surface. Almost instantly, it was gone.

  Could that be a flashlight, a person moving around inside the house?

  Then the window on the second floor, the one that had had the ladder beneath it, opened slowly. Tommy heard a low whistle and propped himself up on his elbows, straining to see in the dark.

  Suddenly a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder, and when he gasped, recoiling from the touch, a powerful flash went off in his face, not once but twice.

  For several seconds he was blinded.

  He heard steps running, but by the time his vision was clear, there was no one in sight. His heart pounded so wildly, he felt sure everyone in the world could hear it. Looking up at the Robie House to see if it was safe to turn his back and race home, Tommy had the distinct feeling that the building was watching him, peering kindly through the darkness to see if he was hurt.

  Once upstairs, with the door safely locked and his damp clothes bundled into a corner, Tommy looked out. The second-floor window was closed now, and the house still.

  Blinded by a flash … that was something that had happened in Hitchcock’s movie Rear Window. Only, in that movie, the person with the flash had been the good guy.

  Who had taken his picture, and what were they going to do with it?

  The next morning was bright and clear. As Tommy’s mom buttered toast and poured orange juice, she said lightly, “I can’t believe it’s June fifteenth. We’ve only been back for two weeks and a day, and so much has happened.”

  “Yup,” Tommy said. He glanced at the fishbowl. It was a good thing Goldman kept secrets.

  “I’ll be home early,” his mom said. “And I want to enroll you in that sports camp on the mornings that I work. But for the rest of this week, don’t go anywhere in the neighborhood without a friend. Are any other kids around?”

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “I’ll phone Calder.”

  “Well, don’t forget what I said last night. Be extra careful. There are lots of Wright houses, but I only have one son.” His mom smiled at him, but Tommy could see a crease of worry under her blue eye.

  As soon as she closed and locked the door, Tommy picked up the phone. “Want to go to the Japanese Garden for our meeting?”

  “Sure,” Calder said.

  “I have an idea, but we need space to try it out.”

  “Great. We’ll be over in ten minutes.”

  The Wright 3 headed under the Fifty-ninth Street overpass and toward the back of the Museum of Science and Industry. Once behind the museum, they followed a cracked sidewalk toward a narrow bridge. Since Tommy had told them he wanted to talk when they reached the garden, the three were quiet.

  Wooded Island was in the middle of a lagoon. Over the decades it had become a sanctuary for white herons, families of ducks, songbirds of all kinds, a few beavers, old turtles, and quiet Hyde Parkers. On the southeast end of the island sat the small but jewel-like Japanese Garden.

  Stepping inside its high wooden gates, the Wright 3 paused.

  “It’s so magical,” Petra said.

  The boys nodded.

  Narrow paths of red pebbles ribboned to the right and left around a small pool and toward the edge of the bigger lagoon. Bonsai trees, bushes with tiny, bell-like blossoms, a miniature weeping willow, and cropped, emerald grass linked the two bodies of water. A scattering of stone lanterns and sit-here rocks surrounded the inner pool, which was fed by a waterfall.

  Single file, the three walked forward. The path they chose led them to a line of flat stepping-stones that in turn led to a small, steeply arched bridge that spanned the channel between pool and lagoon.

  “It’s just like the bridge Goldman has now,” Tommy said. “My mom and I bought it yesterday.”

  “Where did you find the jade fish, Tommy?” Calder asked.

  A cloud crossed Tommy’s face, and he spun around quickly, as if orienting himself, then pointed to an area under some bushes. The three walked over. The dirt beneath looked hard-packed.

  “I covered it up well,” he muttered.

  “You sure this was where?” Calder asked. There was an edge to his voice.

  “Sure!” Tommy barked back. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I do,” Calder said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Petra was standing on a heart-shaped rock. “Look — there’s a miniature island inside this pool that’s just like a fish flipping its tail in the air! I never noticed it before.”

  “Cool,” Tommy agreed. “Hey, you guys want to see what I brought and hear my idea?” The three went over to the waterfall, where they could sit and dangle bare feet in the water while they talked. Tommy told them about the night before: the guy with the black glasses in Chinatown, the two figures in the bushes, the ladder, and the blinding flash. Their eyes were huge, and Tommy sat back with satisfaction.

  “Brave,” Petra murmured.

  “Lucky,” Calder said.

  “Why didn’t you wake your mom up and call the police?” Petra asked.

  Tommy shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want to worry her, and I thought maybe we three could do a better job than the police.”

  Tommy then opened his backpack and pulled out the baby monitor and two receivers. He explained his plan: They would sneak into the Robie House the next night and hide the baby monitor. Tommy would sleep with the receiver on his pillow, and with any luck they’d hear some talking.

  “These guys could have the fish. Who knows?” Tommy finished. “We might get a clue to their plans.”

  “And when we’re in the house, we can take a look around,” Calder said, rattling his pentominoes happily. “I believe the story about Wright leaving some kind of code, and if we can find it, we might get enough publicity to save the house, even without the fish.”

  “But how will we get in?” Petra sounded less enthusiastic.

  “Simple: same way
those guys did.” Tommy smiled. “Because of the work on the house, that ladder is always on the side. And last night they didn’t turn up until late, after midnight. We’ll be there early, as soon as it’s dark.”

  “How about parents?” Calder asked.

  “Thought of that, too,” Tommy said proudly. “We can ask to go to a nine o’clock movie at Delia Dell Hall, just a couple of blocks away from my place. The movie tomorrow night is The Three Musketeers. They won’t mind us seeing that. My mom can walk us over there and then pick us up. She’ll never know we weren’t there in between.”

  Petra clapped her hands. “Brilliant!” she said. “Kind of scary, but at least there’ll be three of us.” Then Petra told them about the voice that had gotten into her head yesterday, and what it had said. She also told them about the superstitious inklings passage in The Invisible Man.

  They spent the next half hour spread out around the garden, testing the baby monitor. With new batteries they could hear one another whisper at fifty feet — their system should work easily between Tommy’s apartment and the Robie House.

  As they stood up to go, Tommy passed around the red herring bag. Everybody ate one. Then Petra said, “Sorry I called you despicable yesterday, Tommy. I was upset.”

  “Sorry I lied to you guys,” Tommy mumbled, looking down at the pond. Just then a huge orange carp swished through the water inches from the base of the waterfall, its bright fins undulating in the dark water.

  “Maybe that’s a sign,” Petra said. “The carp is telling us not to give up.”

  “Right,” Tommy said.