The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “That’s why all the newspapers were Friday editions,” Andy said. “When I asked Brother Banks and the other man, the one behind the adding machine, if they were interested in the book reviews, they said they were more interested in ‘making books’ than in reviewing them.”

  “‘Making book’ is another way of saying ‘writing numbers,’” Officer Feeling explained. “Tell me about the man behind the adding machine,” he urged.

  Andy was quiet, and the wedding guests could be heard. They were coming upstairs, one, two at a time to collect their furs. Mr. Chronister excused himself; he had to be a proper host and say good-bye to his guests. Before he left he turned to his son and said, “Andy, you better tell these men all that you can about Sister Henderson and her donations. The illegal numbers lottery is taking money away from poor people who can’t afford to gamble.”

  “Well,” Andy protested, “it’s giving jobs to some. Like Sister Henderson and Sister Coolidge and Brother Banks.”

  “Help them,” Mr. Chronister commanded before he hurried downstairs to join his wife in saying farewell to their guests.

  “About this man behind the adding machine,” Officer Feeling said. “Can you give us a description?”

  “Andy can do better than that,” Edie said. “Andy can draw you a picture of him. Andy is an artist.”

  “I only draw dragons,” Andy protested.

  Edie looked at Andy and talked to him as if they were the only two people in the room; everything came out straight. “Now is the time to meet your dragon, Andy. Draw the man for him. You can do it. Now is the time, Andy. I know you can do it.”

  “Listen, Andrew,” Sergeant Piper pleaded, “please help us. If you can give us some idea of who the man behind the adding machine was, we can track him down. It is your civic responsibility. We’ve staked out that place four times and can’t get a glimpse of him.”

  “I only do dragons,” Andy said.

  Edie kneeled in front of Andy so that her eyes would be level with his. Andy looked away. “Look at me, Andy,” she insisted. Andy did. “Draw the man for him. You can do it, Andy. Know your real dragon.”

  Someone, he wasn’t sure who, handed him a pad and a ballpoint pen. “I can’t draw with this,” he said. “I need a

  pen with wet ink.” Someone brought him one. “This won’t do either.”

  “What now?” Sergeant Piper asked, exasperated.

  “The ink’s blue. Black would be better.”

  “Draw. Draw, kid.”

  “Okay, for God’s sake. But I won’t guarantee it will come out right.”

  But it did. Andy drew a likeness of the man behind the adding machine, and once he got started, he dashed off a portrait of Brother Banks sitting beside him. It was an accurate drawing, one that would be as much help as fingerprints. Only a close observer would notice that the man’s feet were unusual. Most people would think that Andy was trying to draw alligator shoes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Everything was a letdown after the wedding. The papers carried headlines about the successful breakup of an important illegal numbers lottery. But Andy didn’t get any credit. His father was a legal conservative; he had requested that Andy’s name not be mentioned. He didn’t want any crooks taking revenge on his son, the stool pigeon. Not that Andy wanted any credit anyway. Who wanted credit for that instead of for being a detective?

  Everything else was wrong, too. He had participated in a crime instead of solving one. And he hadn’t even known that he was participating. When he was finally called on to help, he hadn’t helped in any analytical, cool, tough fashion. He had helped in an artistic one. All of his training to be an observer had only helped his drawing, after all. And another thing, who wanted to find out that Sister Henderson had been part of the numbers racket? He liked Sister. Her manners were not so good, but they weren’t so bad either. She was the only black person he had ever thought about and really gotten to know. And she had that thing he really liked, that dignity. There was too much in the whole caper to feel bad about for him to feel good. When Sherlock or Ellery solved a crime, they had nothing at all to feel bad about.

  School was over for the year only two weeks after the wedding. Andy avoided Edie every minute after school, and all the time when school was over. Thursdays seemed lonely; so did the other afternoons. But Thursdays especially. He tried to get involved with his analysis of the grocery ads, but he couldn’t. He had never really enjoyed doing that anyway. Finally, he had only another week before he would go to camp (another ghetto, with a fence around it, too, for God’s sake). At camp he was going to make an effort to be a jock. At camp and forever after.

  In the meantime he had been doing a lot of drawing. He stayed in the house more than his mother considered healthy, but he insisted, and she gave in. She even bought him a set of oil paints. He painted in the utility room with the washer and dryer and the maid (in and out) for company. The first thing he painted in oils was a dragon. The second thing he did was a scene. Rutgers Avenue, all alive with people and construction trucks and sidewalks and traffic signals. It was both smoky and colorful.

  In the middle of June, Mary Jane came home from her European honeymoon. She came to collect all her wedding gifts and move them into her new apartment. He watched. She put the limp dragon pillow into a plastic bag and layered it between the gift contour sheets and two sets of place mats. Andy asked her what she was going to do with it, and she told him that she would stuff it with foam rubber as soon as she got around to it.

  But Andy knew she never would.

  Andy knew that it would end up at a church bazaar or being given to the Salvation Army. Mary Jane had no room for dragons in her life. Her whole life was predictable. She would always be cool. She would never do anything foolish. There would be no discomfort in her life, and there would be no heroics either. She would always be a nerd. Dragons were what made life hard to live, yet no fun to live without.

  He no sooner thought that than he realized that he needed dragons as much as Mary Jane did not. He needed some monster/mystery, some mystery/monster in his life. So did Edie.

  Of course. Of course. Of course. For God’s sake, of course.

  The important parts of life were dragons: difficult, strange and awkward. He had been searching for mystery, for something uncertain, not crime. He had confused the two. Edie had understood. She had tried to help him. She had tried to help him find a crime so that he could realize that he didn’t want it.

  Maybe she had tried to help too much. Maybe she had known about Sister Henderson. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe, for God’s sake, her conversation with Sister had been a code. J like total involvement. As it says in the Bible about charity in Matthew, Chapter VI, verse three. Total: that was the name of the game.

  Andy ran downstairs and got a copy of the New Testament. He found Matthew VI:3. It said, “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” There! That verse was about charity. Alms was charity. Edie didn’t know. But the same passage said not to let your left hand know what your right hand was doing. Edie did know; her right hand knew. Maybe.

  He ran out of the house, straight to the Yakotses’. He rang the bell, and he hoped, he hoped, he hoped that someone would be home. And that it would be Edie. He had to find out about her. He would ask clever, leading questions and trap her into revealing whether or not she knew about Total.

  Edie did answer the door. It was the first he had seen her since the wedding. “Hi, boss,” she said.

  “What’s the matter with you, Yakots? You sure are losing your looks.” That was not what he had meant to say at all. He had wanted to ask cool, leading questions. Then he remembered that he was done with being that kind of cool. Having a dragon and knowing how to live with it was the best cool. Edie Yakots, spacy, flaky Edie Yakots was the coolest person in Foxmeadow. What a relief! He could say whatever he wanted to. “You’re getting fat, for God’s sake.” That’s what he said.

  Edie grinned
. She said nothing.

  He didn’t have to be nonchalant. He could say anything else he wanted to. He could say it right out. “I know about dragons,” he said.

  Edie had walked into the kitchen and fixed them both Cokes. She had done Andy’s with a maraschino cherry and with a swizzle stick and wrapped it with a napkin. He walked with it back into the living room. Edie sat down on the sofa under the dragon painting. “Come here,” she said, patting the seat next to her on the sofa. Andy hesitated. But he walked over, carrying his glass and sat next to her. Edie said nothing but took his free hand and placed it on her stomach.

  Andy was embarrassed. He hadn’t seen her for a month, and here she was getting intimate. How could a guy stay cool, even if he knew that it was no longer necessary to stay cool?

  Then he felt something bump. He jerked his hand away, and Edie laughed. Andy realized what Edie was trying to tell him, and he put his hand on her stomach again. He felt another bump. “Well, Yakots,” he said, laughing, “now, that’s what I’d call a real sidekick.”

  Edie took a sip from her glass of Coke and said, “Harry—he’s my husband—was married before.”

  “I know all that, Yakots.”

  “So he already has someone named after him.”

  “So what’s that mean?” Andy asked.

  “So that means that we’re thinking of naming him Andrew.” She paused and ran her finger around the edge of her glass. “He’ll know about dragons. Right from the beginning.”

  “Well,” Andy said. “Well, well, well. Well,” he said again. “Well!” He paused and laughed out loud. “Well, Yakots, babies can be girls. What will you do if it’s a girl?”

  “Call her Andrea, I guess,” Edie answered. “Either way, it’ll be Andy. For short. For God’s sake.”

  FORTY PERCENT MORE THAN EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT E. L. KONIGSBURG

  Hello, Mrs. Konigsburg.

  Hello.

  I thought that I might ask you some questions about your work and your life.

  That’s perfectly all right with me. I’ll tell you everything except my age and weight.

  Where do you live?

  On the beach in North Florida. It’s all right, isn’t it, if I don’t answer in complete sentences?

  You’re the writer, Mrs. Konigsburg. Let it be on your conscience. Do you have any children?

  I have three. Their names are Paul, Laurie, and Ross. They have posed for the illustrations in my books. Laurie was Claudia and Ross was Jamie in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Paul was Benjamin Dickinson Carr in (George).

  Do you have a husband?

  Yes, I do, thank you. My husband’s name is David, and he is a psychologist. Aren’t you ever going to ask me about my books?

  Patience. Patience.

  I know I’m not supposed to ask you when you were born…

  Ground rules. Ground rules.

  …so I would like to ask you where you were born.

  New York City. But we moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and half when we lived in Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up in small towns in Pennsylvania I graduated from high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania.

  Did you always want to be a writer?

  No. When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon University, I wanted to be a chemist, so I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh; then I taught science at a private girls’ school. I had three children and waited until all three were in school before I started writing.

  Where do you get the ideas for your books?

  From people I know and what happens to them. From places I’ve been and what happens to me. From things I read. Do you have a specific book in mind that you would like to ask about?

  All right. Where did you get the idea for From the Mixedup Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’?

  I had read in the newspaper that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City had purchased a statue for $225. Even though they did not know who had sculpted it, they suspected it had been done by someone famous in the Italian Renaissance. They knew they had an enormous bargain. (The statue is not an angel, and it was not sculpted by Michelangelo. It is called Bust of a Lady.)

  The summer after that article appeared in the paper, our family took a trip to Yellowstone Park. One day, I decided that we should have a picnic. After buying salami and bread, chocolate milk and paper cups, paper plates and napkins, and potato chips and pickles, we got into the car and drove and drove but could not find a picnic table. So when we came to a clearing in the woods, I suggested that we eat there. We all crouched slightly above the ground and spread out our meal. Then the complaints began. The chocolate milk was getting warm, and there were ants all over everything, and the sun was melting the icing on the cupcakes. This was hardly roughing it, and yet my small group could think of nothing but the discomfort.

  What, I wondered, would my children do if they ever decided to leave home? Where, I wondered, would they go? At the very least, they would want all the comforts of home, and they would probably want a few dashes of elegance as well. They would certainly never consider any place less elegant than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. How they love it! And how do I!

  Yes, I thought, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There they could surround themselves with elegance and enjoy the comfort of those magnificent beds. And then, I thought, while they were there, perhaps they could discover the secret of the mysterious bargain statue, and in doing so, they could also learn a much more important secret—how to be different on the inside where it counts.

  That is all very interesting, Mrs. Konigsburg. How did winning the Newbery Medal for that book make you feel?

  Proud and courageous.

  Courageous? The Newbery Medal is an award for an outstanding contribution to children’s literature. It is not given for courage. Are you getting your medals as mixed-up as your files?

  Not at all. I’m not saying that I won the Newbery Medal for having courage; I’m saying that winning the Newbery Medal gave me courage. Let me explain. After I won the Newbery Medal, children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people. That gave me the courage to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine in A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver and about Leonardo da Vinci in The Second Mrs. Giaconda. Readers let me know that they like books that have more to them than meets the eye. Had they not let me know that, I never would have written The View from Saturday.

  I’m glad you brought up the subject of The View from Saturday. Why did you write that book the way that you did—having four short stories right there inside the novel?

  It was the most natural thing in the world. I had started writing a story about a young man named Ethan Potter who boards a school bus the first day of sixth grade. The bus takes an unexpected turn, and a strangely dressed young man boards and sits down next to Ethan. He introduces himself as Julian and explains that his father is about to open a bed and breakfast inn—a B and B. At that point, I left my desk and took a walk along the beach.

  When I write a book, I more or less start a movie in my head, and there I was walking along the beach, doing a re-run of what I had written. When I got to where Julian was telling Ethan about the B and B, I remembered that I had a story in my files—my mixed-up files—about a young man named Noah whose mother insists that he write his grandparents a bread and butter letter, a B and B letter. Fact: That made me remember another short story I had about a dog named Ginger that plays the part of Sandy in the play Annie. And that led me to another story about an Academic Bowl team.

  Fact: Before I had finished my walk, I realized that all those short stories were united by a single theme. Taken together, they reinforced one another, and the whole became more than the sum of the parts.

  I knew that kids would love meeting one character and then two and three, and I also knew—because I had learned it from them—that they would think that fitting all th
e stories together was part of the adventure.

  So how did you feel when you found out that you had won a Newbery Medal for The View from Saturday?

  Filled with joy. And that’s a fact. I knew I had been right about the spirit of adventure shared by good readers.

  Do you have any hobbies?

  I love to draw and paint. I love to read and walk along the beach. I also love movies.

  What makes you feel bad?

  Eating too much chocolate, reading trash, and letting dust balls gather under the sofa.

  What makes you feel good?

  Eating too much chocolate, reading trash, and letting dust balls gather under the sofa.

  Really, Mrs. Konigsburg, will you try to be serious?

  I am very serious about chocolate.

  Let’s get back to your books.

  I am very serious about those, too.

  People tell me that your books don’t always appear to be serious.

  I consider that a compliment. Thank you.

  I guess that’s about all I had to ask. I don’t know how to end this interview.

  Try saying “Thank you.”

  Thank you, Mrs. Konigsburg.

  You’re welcome, Mrs. Konigsburg.

  BOOKS BY E. L KONIGSBURG —

  Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley,

  and Me, Elizabeth

  0-689-30007-7 Atheneum

  Newbery Honor Book

  ALA Notable Children’s Book

  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

  0-689-20586-4 Atheneum

  0-689-71181-6 Aladdin Paperbacks

  Newbery Medal