Pieces and Players Read online

  “There you have it,” the Penguin said, and as he leaned over to straighten the pleats on his trousers, a large, gleaming knife slid from his pocket and clattered to the floor. The blade bounced open in a flash of light.

  “Out!” he said, the front door now open.

  “Thanks so much for —” Early began as the door whumped shut behind them.

  “They’re not big on manners around here.” Petra giggled as the girls rushed down the steps, talking over each other and comparing notes on what they’d just seen.

  If they hadn’t been so busy, they would have noticed a man in a familiar black jacket and hat stepping quickly into Powell’s at the end of the block. Tucked beneath one arm was a package that looked exactly like the three they’d just left.

  The girls never knew.

  * * *

  On the way downtown with Ms. Hussey and the three boys, Early and Petra shared the news.

  “Early was the brave one,” Petra said generously.

  “I wasn’t!” Early said, glowing with pleasure. “I was hiding in the bathroom listening through the door while you had to fight your way past the dragons.”

  “But you started it,” Petra said.

  “I’ve learned not to hesitate when you see an opening at the right time,” Early said. “For better or worse.”

  “I’m glad we didn’t get stabbed by that knife in the pileup,” Petra added.

  Tommy and Calder were looking from girl to girl with interest.

  “Sounds like a switchblade,” Tommy said in his deepest voice.

  “So what were those folks hiding?” Zoomy asked.

  “These are wealthy people who probably buy lots of new things, even at their ages,” Ms. Hussey said. “Maybe it was art, but not the art we’re looking for.”

  Calder had the X pentomino in his hand. “Why would any of them be shopping for art right now? It’s a terrible time for both the museum and Mr. Chase.”

  Ms. Hussey looked troubled. “Mrs. Sharpe was convinced we should head down here. I wonder …” She seemed to shake off the idea. “Well. I suppose there are many things we’ll never know about a bunch of old, rich folks.” She paused for a moment. “I didn’t mean Mrs. Sharpe.”

  You sure? Tommy thought and sucked in his cheeks.

  Once off at the last stop, the Millennium Park station, Ms. Hussey marched the five kids right into the closest Subway shop. They split three foot-long sandwiches and drank lots of water.

  “Teenagers need fortification,” she announced, pulling money out of her back pocket. “Mrs. Sharpe insisted we have some expense money, no worries.” Ms. Hussey had a way of turning the world into a place that was waiting for what kids had to offer.

  “Ms. Hussey,” Petra said, then hesitated. “Um, you know, Early and I read lots from The Truth About My Art yesterday. It’s great, and we shared with the boys last night, by phone. It has a ton about faces in art …”

  “Oh! Funny thing,” Ms. Hussey said, folding her paper napkin into smaller and smaller rectangles. “I guess. Right.”

  “Have you read it?” Early asked.

  “Not exactly, but I listened to some inspiring parts. I knew you guys would love it, and I asked — oh, never mind, you did find a copy! Doesn’t Sarah Chase Farmer seem like a friend?”

  “Did Mr. Devlin say it was his?” Tommy asked abruptly.

  “Eagle didn’t say and I didn’t ask,” Ms. Hussey said slowly. “What are you getting at?”

  Eagle, Tommy thought. Heard that! No more Mr. Devlin. Tommy looked around for backup.

  “We’re wondering if Mrs. Sharpe didn’t tell you about Devlin — I mean, whatever, Mr. Eagle —” Calder broke off.

  “I think he’d want you to call him Eagle,” Ms. Hussey’s tone was neutral.

  “— because she wasn’t sure what Eagle was up to,” Calder blundered on. “What if Mrs. Sharpe didn’t want you to meet him? And you know, the copy of Mrs. Farmer’s book was on the shelf at Powell’s one minute, seconds after we met Eagle Devlin, and then it was gone.”

  “Why don’t you guys like him?” Ms. Hussey asked.

  “It’s not that.” Petra shifted uncomfortably. “We don’t know him. And he seems to be familiar with stuff that fits too well with the heist. Like he’s been investigating it on his own. We were worried about you.”

  “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,” Ms. Hussey laughed just as her phone rang.

  The kids watched her face light up — even Zoomy, who leaned in close. “Oh, wonderful,” she said to whoever was on the other end of the phone. “Yes, I hope so. Downtown with the kids. I’ll tell them.”

  She ended the call and announced, “The news from Mrs. Sharpe is that Mr. Chase is sometimes awake but not responding to any conversation. They say he may recover all of his speech with time.” Ms. Hussey looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled at the group. “She’s glad we’re here.”

  Tommy had to struggle to imagine Mrs. Sharpe looking glad.

  Once outside and into the park, they wandered. It was lunchtime, but the sun was already on its way into afternoon.

  “Wish we were seeing all of this in full summer, when the water is on,” Ms. Hussey said. “But we can imagine. I know we’re not going to find the stolen artworks peeking out from behind a face in the middle of a park, but I’m hoping some detail will get our minds racing in the right direction.”

  Human faces aren’t the only things we try to decode, Petra thought.

  Tommy couldn’t help but be nagged by an opposite thought: Was Ms. Hussey taking them away from the real investigation for some reason? Had Mrs. Sharpe or Eagle Devlin put her up to it? But that made no sense — didn’t Mrs. Sharpe want them to find the paintings?

  As if reading Tommy’s mind, Calder then said, “Ms. Hussey, can you call Mrs. Sharpe back? Just to be sure she isn’t on her way to Mr. Cracken’s house right now? I mean, what if she got lured there and it really is the stolen art and — well, the police come and she goes to jail forever? Besides, there’s that Penguin guy with a knife.”

  Ms. Hussey stopped moving and faced the five, a quick grin fading as she thought about what he’d said. “I guess I could call back,” she said slowly. “There’re so many confusing pieces here.”

  They stood in a small circle as she turned away, the phone to her ear. “It’s me again. Just a quick question: Will anyone be joining the other trustees at Monument Cracken’s house? Early and Petra were just there.”

  Zoomy suddenly leaned closer to Ms. Hussey’s back.

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “Of course. Well, don’t overdo it.” As she shut her phone, she avoided the kids’ eyes.

  “The trustees are apparently showing each other pieces of their individual collections and getting advice,” she said unhappily and walked toward a bench and sat down.

  The kids followed, wanting now to reassure her. “If I were a thief,” Petra said, “I’d hide art in the most unlikely place possible, and that would be a place like this, like Millennium Park, a public space that’s filled with huge, hollow structures that happen to be art as well.”

  “Right! A place that no one would look because everybody’s already looking.” Early nodded. “And those old folks can’t be out investigating with their fancy shoes and canes, so better us than them.”

  “Oh!” Ms. Hussey said, looking faint. “The thought of Mr. Cracken’s house! What if, as you said, the trustees are being used in a police sting of some kind, and have no idea …”

  “Unlikely they wouldn’t see the game, but it’s a definite maybe,” Tommy muttered.

  “What if Mr. Cracken invited them all over so they could get friendly again? After all that fighting, you know?” Zoomy suggested.

  “But why all the wrapped packages?” Petra blurted. “It doesn’t make sense. Unless each of the trustees was responsible for one or two of the stolen pieces and — oh, forget it.”

  Ms. Hussey shrugged, stood, and brushed off the front of her jacket as if brushing off her f
ears.

  “Maybe it was show-and-tell time,” she suggested, her voice taking on some of its old I’m-in-charge-now confidence. “I think this is a case of moving ahead with our faces investigation, following Mrs. Farmer’s lead and not worrying while we’re down here. There are both so many pieces and so many players in this picture — you remember the sheet you guys were given in the Farmer — that it’s easy to misinterpret things. And hard for anyone to juggle such a varied group of missing objects with such a variety of people. But our — I mean, my — idea, after all, is so logical, the idea of hiding art in the open, where no one would think to look — and hiding faces behind faces.”

  Our? Tommy thought. Our meaning who else?

  As if reading his mind, Zoomy gave him a funny look.

  Although the five all had uncomfortable questions, they wanted to believe Ms. Hussey. After all, who could tell what step might become a clue, or what clue lead to what step?

  She walked them to the middle of the Crown Fountain.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Zoomy said. “Someone tell me about the deeps.”

  Ms. Hussey’s expression softened. “You’d love it. In warm weather, a video of a face appears on the wall at either end. There are hundreds of different faces, all belonging to everyday Chicagoans. Every ten minutes, there’s a new one. Meanwhile, these tall, rectangular structures pour water down their sides, and there’s a shallow pool between the two. Shoes come off in summer, and everyone becomes a kid — tiptoeing, splashing, rolling, leaping, running. It’s a place where water allows people to forget what they look like.” Ms. Hussey paused. “Cool, huh?”

  “Tell Zoomy what happens with the faces,” Calder said.

  “Well, each face was filmed slowly puckering her or his mouth, and then presto! At a certain point, a powerful stream of water shoots out from each one at the same exact time. The faces are like giant, living gargoyles, spitting water both toward each other and onto everyone beneath. These people’s expressions aren’t frightening, though; they’re not like those scary stone gargoyles on old buildings. They’re relaxed. Unselfconscious. This is interactive art, different every time because of the changing videos, the come-and-go of people playing in the fountain, and the shifts in the light and the weather. The artist is Jaume Plensa, from Spain.”

  Petra, Calder, Tommy, and Early all agreed that you could spend a long time there without becoming bored; as Ms. Hussey said, the changing images and the visitors around them created an endless flow of pieces and players. Zoomy said he wanted to come back in August and bring his grandpa, who he said hated sand but loved spitting water. He’d understand this art.

  Then Ms. Hussey pointed out that you could certainly hide climate-controlled storage boxes somewhere inside these giant towers, or in the operating rooms beneath them, the places for water pipes and computerized controls; there had to be more than enough dry space.

  As they walked away from the Crown Fountain toward some of the other sculptures, Petra thought about all those combinations that made up the art in the summer, and the blank, sleeping walls as they looked now. Blank spaces. Suddenly the sadness of the missing art in the Farmer, art that couldn’t just reappear with the warm weather, came back in a rush. The pieces that were still there offered joy, of course, but the gaps created by what was missing felt so horribly wrong. Each day added weight to the crime.

  The faces in the fountain belonged to living people, but the faces in the Farmer — well, Petra thought, if they were truly family to many, they were now missing family.

  The word murder drifted into Petra’s mind. No! She tried to get rid of the thought. These pieces are waiting, she told herself, and still hold a mirror to so many dreams …

  “This one is nothing but faces!” Early exclaimed as they reached the Bean.

  And nothing but a mirror, thought Petra with a little shock of recognition. As if it’s literally doing what Mrs. Farmer knew art could do.

  “Birds of a feather.” Ms. Hussey smiled.

  “Birds of a feather flock together,” said Calder. “Don’t you start with the Mother Goose stuff, Ms. Hussey! Please!”

  His old teacher laughed and frowned, as if wondering herself why she’d said that.

  A giant, lima bean–shaped sculpture made from mirrored steel, the Bean pulled everyone closer, inviting them to touch, circle, and walk through the arch in its center. Once inside, looking up, the world became a swirl of reflections, symmetrical but not, because of the people flowing beneath. A dash of red, a snatch of blue: Here you are! And here! And here! it whispered, teasing all who tried to puzzle out its magic.

  Ms. Hussey watched as Early and Petra walked straight toward the curved surface and placed their hands against it. Twenty fingers suddenly became forty, palm to palm.

  “No secrets,” Petra said happily. I’ll just enjoy this moment, she told herself.

  “Or all secrets,” Early added. “Like there are so many crazy ways to see yourself in this world that you don’t know which one is real. If there is one.”

  “Right,” Petra said, glancing happily at her new friend.

  “Hey,” Early said, “let’s see how far away we can get before we disappear.” She and Petra backed up as the three boys vanished under the arch.

  It was dizzying either way. Stepping back from the Bean, it became half crowd and ground, half sky and clouds. An elliptical landscape soared up and down and side to side as if the world had shrunk, come loose, and was rolling around itself — as if everyone was on it but off it. The girls noticed that people forgot to be normal and did crazy things near the sculpture: dancing in place, lying down and waving their feet in the air, looking over one shoulder, snapping pictures from all angles. Some just stood and stared with their mouths open. Others circled it, grinned, walked closer, then farther away, and even tried everything over again, as if repetition would help them to understand what they saw.

  “Its real name is Cloud Gate,” Ms. Hussey said. “It’s by a British artist, Anish Kapoor. His work is often about the Hindu ideas of transformation, of nature and humanity working together, and the play of here and what if. You can sure feel that in this piece. At dusk, I love the way the Bean lets you follow the colors of the sky better than you can with the naked eye. Kind of like someone is painting them on that huge, curved surface. Like that subtle shift of light becomes art, which makes it easier to see. And then bang! electricity takes over the city, and the sculpture becomes dazzling all over again. That’s when people vanish into the Bean’s mirror. But during the day the crowds are everything, as if you can suddenly watch busy lives, good plus bad, standing out against the earth.”

  “I think Mrs. Farmer would get it, even though it’s so modern,” Early said.

  “Yup,” Petra agreed. “Like all great art, it makes you notice life.”

  “Now, that’s a thought.” Ms. Hussey released her hair then swirled it back into a bun, always a sign that she was working on an idea.

  Tommy came running over. “Hey! Zoomy’s gone!” he panted.

  Ms. Hussey and the girls dashed into the arch only to find themselves stuck in a dense crowd of kids all talking, laughing, and turning slowly in circles. Calder’s head popped out in the middle, but Zoomy was nowhere to be seen.

  Suddenly the group surged on and Zoomy appeared, squatting and chin-tapping in a corner.

  The kids leaned over him. “Zoomy, man! Sorry I lost you!” Tommy said breathlessly.

  “Got your notebook?” Ms. Hussey asked.

  Zoomy nodded, pulled it out, and wrote, ~confusing bean. He stood up and hit his head. “Ow! Think there’re any doors in this thing?” he asked. “I was looking for a way to get inside, and suddenly you guys were gone and it seemed like the wall was squashing me.”

  “Hey, good work on the door idea!” Calder said. He had the T pentomino out of his pocket. “T for turn. Tricky. Try.”

  “Try, tricky, turn,” Tommy added.

  “Let’s stop being tricky and go s
it down over there for a moment,” Ms. Hussey said, pointing to a long table with benches. They did. Somehow, the Bean took a lot of energy.

  They watched for a while in silence as one group of people after another turned a corner in the park, saw the Bean, and flowed toward it as if pulled by a huge magnet. All languages drifted through the air.

  When the sun hit the Bean at certain moments, it blinded. When clouds moved overhead, it seemed to rock like a boat, but one that was upside down.

  Calder, in that quiet moment, thought suddenly about the desperate faces on Rembrandt’s bean-shaped ship and felt discouraged. Ms. Hussey had made a good point — there were so many priceless objects involved and this was such a confusing puzzle. Why were the five of them even down here? Was it just to get them out of the way? And did Mrs. Sharpe really believe that a bunch of thirteen-year-olds could help to decipher what was going on? Was their group of five really that smart?

  Tommy, next to him, was wondering why they hadn’t researched Crown Fountain and the Bean before coming here. If the stolen art was hidden inside either one, you’d never see it from the outside. Was Ms. Hussey so used to being around sixth graders that she’d forgotten they were eighth graders now, and could handle a lot more?

  “Maybe we can learn about how the art could have gotten inside either the Bean or the Crown if we go online,” Tommy said. “I mean, it’s fun looking at these sculptures, but what good does that do?”

  Ms. Hussey shot him a look, as if to say, Are you complaining?

  She and the kids had already touched every inch of exposed surface on the Bean that they could reach, trailing their fingers across the reflections. There didn’t seem to be a seam or even a line anywhere. No way to get inside.

  “Fine,” Ms. Hussey said, pulling out her phone, and looked up the story of the Bean. “It is indeed hollow and took a long time, two years, to finish,” she reported. “It was completed in 2006. It weighs one hundred and ten tons and stands thirty-three feet high. It’s made from one hundred and sixty-eight stainless steel plates welded together, and Kapoor was inspired by the movements of a drop of liquid mercury.” She looked up. “Have you kids ever seen mercury? It’s a poisonous element, but a drop is similar to a near-weightless, elastic, silver marble. It’s treacherous, beautiful — and keeps changing shape.”