Cigarette Trick

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hungary, Richard Hoffman’s family had been the

I n manufacturers of Hoffman’s Rose Water, a product which

was used at the time for both cosmetic and medicinal pur-

poses. Hoffman’s mother drank the rose water for her indiges-

tion, and his father used it to scent and cool his groin after

exercise. The servants rinsed the Hoffmans’ table linens in a

cold bath infused with rose water such that even the kitchen

would be perfumed. The cook mixed a dash of it into her

sweetbread batter. For evening events, Budapest ladies wore

expensive imported colognes, but Hoffman’s Rose Water was a

staple product of daytime hygiene for all women, as requisite as

soap. Hungarian men could be married for decades without

ever realizing that the natural smell of their wives’ skin was not,

in fact, a refined scent of blooming roses.

Richard Hoffman’s father was a perfect gentleman, but his

mother slapped the servants. His paternal grandfather had been

a drunk and a brawler, and his maternal grandfather had been a

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Bavarian boar hunter, trampled to death at the age of ninety

by his own horses. After her husband died of consumption,

Hoffman’s mother transferred the entirety of the family’s for-

tune into the hands of a handsome Russian charlatan named

Katanovsky, a common conjurer and a necromancer who prom-

ised Madame Hoffman audiences with the dead. As for Rich-

ard Hoffman himself, he moved to America, where he mur-

dered two people.

Hoffman immigrated to Pittsburgh during World War II and

worked as a busboy for over a decade. He had a terrible, humili-

ating way of speaking with customers.

“I am from Hungary! ” he would bark. “Are you Hungary, too?

If you Hungary, you in the right place! ”

For years he spoke such garbage, even after he had learned

excellent English, and could be mistaken for a native-born

steelworker. With this ritual degradation he was tipped gener-

ously, and saved enough money to buy a supper club called the

Pharaoh’s Palace, featuring a nightly magic act, a comic, and

some showgirls. It was very popular with gamblers and the

newly rich.

When Hoffman was in his late forties, he permitted a young

man named Ace Douglas to audition for a role as a supporting

magician. Ace had no nightclub experience, no professional

photos or references, but he had a beautiful voice over the

telephone, and Hoffman granted him an audience.

On the afternoon of the audition, Ace arrived in a tuxedo.

His shoes had a wealthy gleam, and he took his cigarettes from

a silver case, etched with his clean initials. He was a slim,

attractive man with fair brown hair. When he was not smiling,

he looked like a matinee idol, and when he was smiling, he

looked like a friendly lifeguard. Either way, he seemed alto-

gether too affable to perform good magic (Hoffman’s other

magicians cultivated an intentional menace), but his act was

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wonderful and entertaining, and he was unsullied by the often

stupid fashions of magic at the time. (Ace didn’t claim to be

descended from a vampire, for instance, or empowered with

secrets from the tomb of Ramses, or to have been kidnaped by

Gypsies as a child, or raised by missionaries in the mysterious

Orient.) He didn’t even have a female assistant, unlike Hoff-

man’s other magicians, who knew that some bounce in fishnets

could save any sloppy act. What’s more, Ace had the good sense

and class not to call himself the Great anything or the Mag-

nificent anybody.

Onstage, with his smooth hair and white gloves, Ace

Douglas had the sexual ease of Sinatra.

There was an older waitress known as Big Sandra at the

Pharaoh’s Palace on the afternoon of Ace Douglas’s audition,

setting up the cocktail bar. She watched the act for a few min-

utes, then approached Hoffman, and whispered in his ear, “At

night, when I’m all alone in my bed, I sometimes think about

men.”

“I bet you do, Sandra, ” said Hoffman.

She was always talking like this. She was a fantastic, dirty

woman, and he had actually had sex with her a few times.

She whispered, “And when I get to thinking about men,

Hoffman, I think about a man exactly like that.”

“You like him? ” Hoffman asked.

“Oh, my.”

“You think the ladies will like him? ”

“Oh, my, ” said Big Sandra, fanning herself daintily. “Heav-

ens, yes.”

Hoffman fired his other two magicians within the hour.

After that, Ace Douglas worked every night that the Phar-

aoh’s Palace was open. He was the highest paid performer in

Pittsburgh. This was not during a decade when nice young

women generally came to bars unescorted, but the Pharaoh’s

Palace became a place where nice women — extremely attrac-

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tive young single nice women — would come with their best

girlfriends and their best dresses to watch the Ace Douglas

magic show. And men would come to the Pharaoh’s Palace to

watch the nice young women and to buy them expensive cock-

tails.

Hoffman had his own table at the back of the restaurant,

and after the magic show was over, he and Ace Douglas would

entertain young ladies there. The girls would blindfold Ace,

and Hoffman would choose an object on the table for him to

identify.

“It’s a fork, ” Ace would say. “It’s a gold cigarette lighter.”

The more suspicious girls would open their purses and seek

unusual objects — family photographs, prescription medicine, a

traffic ticket — all of which Ace would describe easily. The girls

would laugh, and doubt his blindfold, and cover his eyes with

their damp hands. They had names like Lettie and Pearl and

Siggie and Donna. They all loved dancing, and they all tended

to keep their nice fur wraps with them at the table, out of pride.

Hoffman would introduce them to eligible or otherwise inter-

ested businessmen. Ace Douglas would escort the nice young

ladies to the parking lot late at night, listening politely as they

spoke up to him, resting his hand reassuringly on the small of

their backs if they wavered.

At the end of every evening, Hoffman would say sadly, “Me

and Ace, we see so many girls come and go...”

Ace Douglas could turn a pearl necklace into a white glove

and a cigarette lighter into a candle. He could produce a silk

scarf from a lady’s hairpin. But his finest trick was in 1959, when

he produced his little sister from a convent school and offered

her to Richard Hoffman in marriage.

Her name was Angela. She had been a volleyball champion

in the convent school, and she had legs like a movie star’s legs,

and a very pretty laugh. She was ten days pregnant on her

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wedding day, although she and Hoffman had known each other

for only two weeks. Shortly thereafter, Angela had a daughter,

and they named her Esther. Throughout the early 1960s, they

all prospered happily.

Esther turned eight years old, and the Hoffmans celebrated her

birthday with a special party at the Pharaoh’s Palace. That

night, there was a thief sitting in the cocktail lounge.

He didn’t look like a thief. He was dressed well enough, and

he was served without any trouble. The thief drank a few marti-

nis. Then, in the middle of the magic show, he leaped over the

bar, kicked the bartender away, punched the cash register open,

and ran out of the Pharaoh’s Palace with his hands full of tens

and twenties.

The customers were screaming, and Hoffman heard it from

the kitchen. He chased the thief into the parking lot and caught

him by the hair.

“You steal from me? ” he yelled. “You fucking steal from me? ”

“Back off, pal, ” the thief said. The thief ’s name was George

Purcell, and he was drunk.

“You fucking steal from me? ” Hoffman yelled.

He shoved George Purcell into the side of a yellow Buick.

Some of the customers had come outside, and were watching

from the doorway of the restaurant. Ace Douglas came out, too.

He walked past the customers, into the parking lot, and lit a

cigarette. Ace Douglas watched as Hoffman lifted the thief by

his shirt and threw him against the hood of a Cadillac.

“Back off me! ” Purcell said.

“You fucking steal from me? ”

“You ripped my shirt! ” Purcell cried, aghast. He was looking

down at his ripped shirt when Hoffman shoved him into the

side of the yellow Buick again.

Ace Douglas said, “Richard? Could you take it easy? ” (The

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Buick was his, and it was new. Hoffman was steadily pounding

George Purcell’s head into the door.) “Richard? Excuse me?

Excuse me, Richard. Please don’t damage my car, Richard.”

Hoffman dropped the thief to the ground and sat on his

chest. He caught his breath and smiled. “Don’t ever, ” he ex-

plained, “ever. Don’t ever steal from me.”

Still sitting on Purcell’s chest, he calmly picked up the tens

and twenties that had fallen on the asphalt and handed them to

Ace Douglas. Then he slid his hand into Purcell’s back pocket

and pulled out a wallet, which he opened. He took nine dollars

from the wallet, because that was all the money he found there.

Purcell was indignant.

“That’s my money! ” he shouted. “You can’t take my money! ”

“ Your money? ” Hoffman slapped Purcell’s head. “ Your

money? Your fucking money? ”

Ace Douglas tapped Hoffman’s shoulder lightly and said,

“Richard? Excuse me? Let’s just wait for the police, okay? How

about it, Richard? ”

“ Your money? ” Hoffman was slapping Purcell in the face

now with the wallet. “You fucking steal from me, you have no

money! You fucking steal from me, I own all your money! ”

“Aw, Jesus, ” Purcell said. “Quit it, will ya? Leave me alone,

will ya? ”

“Let him be, ” Ace Douglas said.

“ Your money? I own all your money! ” Hoffman bellowed. “I

own you! You fucking steal from me, I own your fucking shoes! ”

Hoffman lifted Purcell’s leg and pulled off one of his shoes. It

was a nice brown leather wingtip. He hit Purcell with it once in

the face and tore off the other shoe. He beat on Purcell a few

times with that shoe until he lost his appetite for it. Then he just

sat on Purcell’s chest for a while, catching his breath, hugging

the shoes and rocking in a sad way.

“Aw, Jesus, ” Purcell groaned. His lip was bleeding.

“Let’s get up now, Richard, ” Ace suggested.

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After some time, Hoffman jumped off Purcell and walked

back into the Pharaoh’s Palace, carrying the thief ’s shoes. His

tuxedo was torn in one knee, and his shirt was hanging loose.

The customers backed against the walls of the restaurant and let

him pass. He went into the kitchen and threw Purcell’s shoes

into one of the big garbage cans next to the potwashing sinks.

He went into his office and shut the door.

The potwasher was a young Cuban fellow named Manuel.

He picked George Purcell’s brown wingtips out of the garbage

can and held one of them up against the bottom of his own foot.

It seemed to be a good match, so he took off his own shoes and

put on Purcell’s. Manuel’s shoes were plastic sandals, and these

he threw away. A little later, Manuel watched with satisfaction

as the chef dumped a vat of cold gravy on top of the sandals, and

when he went back to washing pots, he whistled to himself a

little song of good luck.

A policeman arrived. He handcuffed George Purcell and

brought him into Hoffman’s office. Ace Douglas followed

them.

“You want to press charges? ” the cop asked.

“No, ” Hoffman said. “Forget about it.”

“You don’t press charges, I have to let him go.”

“Let him go.”

“This man says you took his shoes.”

“He’s a criminal. He came in my restaurant with no shoes.”

“He took my shoes, ” Purcell said. His shirt collar was soaked

with blood.

“He never had no shoes on. Look at him. No shoes on his

feet.”

“You took my money and my goddamn shoes, you animal.

Twenty-dollar shoes! ”

“Get this stealing man out of my restaurant, please, ” Hoff-

man said.

“Officer? ” Ace Douglas said. “Excuse me, but I was here the

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whole time, and this man never did have any shoes on. He’s a

derelict, sir.”

“But I’m wearing dress socks! ” Purcell shouted. “Look at me!

Look at me! ”

Hoffman stood up and walked out of his office. The cop

followed Hoffman, leading George Purcell. Ace Douglas

trailed behind. On his way through the restaurant, Hoffman

stopped to pick up his daughter, Esther, from her birthday party.

He carried her out to the parking lot.

“Listen to me now, ” he told Purcell. “You ever steal from me

again, I’ll kill you.”

“Take it easy, ” the cop said.

“If I even see you on the street, I’ll fucking kill you.”

The cop said, “You want to press charges, pal, you press

charges. Otherwise, you take it easy.”

“He doesn’t like to be robbed, ” Ace Douglas explained.

“Animal, ” Purcell muttered.

“You see this little girl? ” Hoffman asked. “My little girl is

eight years old today. If I’m walking on the street with my little

girl and I see you, I will leave her on one side of the street and I

will cross the street and I will kill you in front of my little girl.”

“That’s enough, ” the cop said. He led George Purcell out of

the parking lot and took off his handcuffs.

The cop and the thief walked away together. Hoffman stood

on the steps of the Pharaoh’s Palace, holding Esther and shout-

ing. “Right in front of my little girl, you make me kill you?

What kind of man are you? Crazy man! You ruin a little girl’s

life! Terrible man! ”

Esther was crying. Ace Douglas took her from Hoffman’s

arms.

The next week, the thief George Purcell came back to the

Pharaoh’s Palace. It was noon, and very quiet. The prep cook

was making chicken stock, and Manuel the potwasher was

cleaning out the dry goods storage area. Hoffman was in his

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office, ordering vegetables from his wholesaler. Purcell came

straight back into the kitchen, sober.

“I want my goddamn shoes! ” he yelled, pounding on the

office door. “Twenty-dollar shoes! ”

Then Richard Hoffman came out of his office and beat

George Purcell to death with a meat mallet. Manuel the pot-

washer tried to hold him back, and Hoffman beat him to death

with the meat mallet, too.

Esther Hoffman did not grow up to be a natural magician. Her

hands were dull. It was no fault of her own, just an unfortunate

birth flaw. Otherwise, she was a bright girl.

Her uncle, Ace Douglas, had been the American champion

close-up magician for three years running. He’d won his titles

using no props or tools at all, except a single silver dollar coin.

During one competition, he’d vanished and produced the coin

for fifteen dizzying minutes without the expert panel of judges

ever noticing that the coin spent a lot of time resting openly

on Ace Douglas’s knee. He would put it there, where it lay

gleaming to be seen if one of the judges had only glanced away

for a moment from Ace’s hands. But they would never glance

away, convinced that he still held a coin before them in his

fingers. They were not fools, but they were dupes for his fake

takes, his fake drops, his mock passes, and a larger cast of

impossible moves so deceptive they went entirely unnoticed.

Ace Douglas had motions he himself had never even named.

He was a scholar of misdirection. He proscribed skepticism.

His fingers were as loose and quick as thoughts.

But Esther Hoffman’s magic was sadly pedestrian. She did

the Famous Dancing Cane trick, the Famous Vanishing Milk

trick, and the Famous Interlocking Chinese Rings trick. She

produced parakeets from light bulbs and pulled a dove from a

burning pan. She performed at birthday parties and could float

a child. She performed at grammar schools and could cut and

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restore the neckties of principals. If the principal was a lady,

Esther could borrow a ring from the principal’s finger, lose it,

and then find it in a child’s pocket. If the lady principal wore no

jewelry, Esther could simply run a sword through the woman’s

neck while the children in the audience screamed in spasms of

rapture.

Simple, artless tricks.

“You’re young, ” Ace told her. “You’ll improve.”

But she did not. Esther made more money giving flute les-

sons to little girls than performing magic. She was a fine flutist,

and this was maddening to her. Why all this worthless musical

skill?

“Your fingers are very quick, ” Ace told her. “There’s nothing

wrong with your fingers. But it’s not about quickness, Esther.

You don’t have to speed through coins.”

“I hate coins.”

“You should handle coins as if they amuse you, Esther. Not as

if they frighten you.”

“With coins, it’s like I’m wearing oven mitts.”

“Coins are not always easy.”

“I never fool anybody. I can’t misdirect.”

“It’s not about misdirection, Esther. It’s about direction. ”

“I don’t have hands, ” Esther complained. “I have paws.”

It was true that Esther could only fumble coins and cards,

and she would never be a deft magician. She had no gift. Also,

she hadn’t the poise. Esther had seen photographs of her uncle

when he was young at the Pharaoh’s Palace, leaning against

patrician pillars of marble in his tuxedo and cufflinks. No form

of magic existed that was close-up enough for him. He could sit

on a chair surrounded on all sides by the biggest goons of

spectators — people who challenged him or grabbed his arm in

mid-pass — and he would borrow from a goon some common

object and absolutely vanish it. Some goon’s car keys in Ace’s

hand would turn into absolutely nothing. Absolutely gone.

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Ace’s nightclub act at the Pharaoh’s Palace had been a tribute

to the elegant vices: coins, cards, dice, champagne flutes, and

cigarettes. Everything was to suggest and encourage drinking,

sin, gamesmanship, and money. The fluidity of fortune. He

could do a whole act of cigarette effects alone, starting with a

single cigarette borrowed from a lady in the audience. He would

pass it through a coin and give the coin to the lady. He would

tear the cigarette in half and restore it, swallow it, cough it back

up along with six more, duplicate them, and duplicate them

again until he ended up with lit cigarettes smoking hot between

all his fingers and in his mouth, behind his ears, emerging from

every pocket — surprised? he was terrified! — and then, with a

nod, all the lit cigarettes would vanish except the original. That

one he would smoke luxuriously during the applause.

Also, Esther had pictures of her father during the same pe-

riod, when he owned the Pharaoh’s Palace. He was handsome in

his tuxedo, but with a heavy posture. She had inherited his thick

wrists.

When Richard Hoffman got out of prison, he moved in

with Ace and Esther. Ace had a tremendous home in the coun-

try by then, a tall yellow Victorian house with a mile of woods

behind it and a lawn like a baron’s. Ace Douglas had made a

tidy fortune from magic. He had operated the Pharaoh’s Palace

from the time that Hoffman was arrested, and, with Hoffman’s

permission, had eventually sold it at great profit to a gour-

met restaurateur. Esther had been living with Ace since she’d

finished high school, and she had a whole floor to herself. Ace’s

little sister Angela had divorced Hoffman, also with his permis-

sion, and had moved to Florida to live with her new husband.

What Hoffman had never permitted was for Esther to visit him

in prison, and so it had been fourteen years since they’d seen

each other. In prison he had grown even sturdier. He seemed

shorter than Ace and Esther remembered, and some weight

gained had made him more broad. He had also grown a thick

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beard, with handsome red tones. He was easily moved to tears,

or, at least, seemed to be always on the verge of being moved to

tears. The first few weeks of living together again were not

altogether comfortable for Esther and Hoffman. They had only

the briefest conversations, such as this one:

Hoffman asked Esther, “How old are you now? ”

“Twenty-two.”

“I’ve got undershirts older than you.”

Or, in another conversation, Hoffman said, “The fellows I

met in prison are the nicest fellows in the world.”

And Esther said, “Actually, Dad, they probably aren’t.”

And so on.

In December of that year, Hoffman attended a magic show

of Esther’s, performed at a local elementary school.

“She’s really not very good, ” he reported later to Ace.

“I think she’s fine, ” Ace said. “She’s fine for the kids, and she

enjoys herself.”

“She’s pretty terrible. Too dramatic.”

“Perhaps.”

“She says, behold! It’s terrible. behold this! behold

that! ”

“But they’re children.” Ace said. “With children, you need to

explain when you’re about to do a trick and when you just did

one, because they’re so excited they don’t realize what’s going

on. They don’t even know what a magician is. They can’t tell the

difference between when you’re doing magic and when you’re

just standing there.”

“I think she’s very nervous.”

“Could be.”

“She says, behold the parakeet! ”

“Her parakeet tricks are not bad.”

“It’s not dignified, ” Hoffman said. “She convinces nobody.”

“It’s not meant to be dignified, Richard. It’s for the children.”

The next week, Hoffman bought Esther a large white rabbit.

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“If you do the tricks for the children, you should have a

rabbit, ” he told her.

Esther hugged him. She said, “I’ve never had a rabbit.”

Hoffman lifted the rabbit from the cage. It was an unnatu-

rally enormous rabbit.

“Is it pregnant? ” Esther asked.

“No, she is not. She is only large.”

“That’s an extremely large rabbit for any magic trick, ” Ace

observed.

Esther said, “They haven’t invented the hat big enough to

pull that rabbit out of.”

“She actually folds up to a small size, ” Hoffman said. He held

the rabbit between his hands as if she were an accordion and

squeezed her into a great white ball.

“She seems to like that, ” Ace said, and Esther laughed.

“She doesn’t mind it. Her name is Bonnie.” Hoffman held

the rabbit forward by the nape of her neck, as though she were

a massive kitten. Dangling fully stretched like that, she was

bigger than a big raccoon.

“Where’d you get her? ” Esther asked.

“From the newspaper! ” Hoffman announced, beaming.

Esther liked Bonnie the rabbit more than she liked her trick

doves and parakeets, who were attractive enough but were es-

sentially only pigeons that had been lucky with their looks. Ace

liked Bonnie, too. He allowed Bonnie to enjoy the entirety

of his large Victorian home, with little regard for her pellets,

which were small, rocky, and inoffensive. She particularly en-

joyed sitting in the center of the kitchen table, and from that

spot would regard Ace, Esther, and Hoffman gravely. In this

manner, Bonnie was very feline.

“Will she always be this judgmental? ” Esther asked.

Bonnie became more canine when she was allowed outdoors.

She would sleep on the porch, lying on her side in a patch of

sun, and if anyone approached the porch she would look up at

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that person lazily, in the manner of a bored and trustful dog. At

night, she slept with Hoffman. He tended to sleep on his side,

curled like a child, and Bonnie would sleep upon him, perched

on his highest point, which was generally his hip.

As a performer, however, Bonnie was useless. She was far too

large to be handled gracefully onstage, and on the one occasion

that Esther did try to produce her from a hat, she hung in the

air so sluggishly that the children in the back rows were sure

that she was a fake. She appeared to be a huge toy, as store-

bought as their own stuffed animals.

“Bonnie will never be a star, ” Hoffman said.

Ace said, “You spoiled her, Richard, the way the magicians

have been spoiling their lovely assistants for decades. You

spoiled Bonnie by sleeping with her.”

That spring, a young lawyer and his wife (who was also a young

lawyer) moved into the large Victorian house next door to Ace

Douglas’s large Victorian house. It all happened very swiftly.

The widow who had lived there for decades died in her sleep,

and the place was sold within a few weeks. The new neighbors

had great ambitions. The husband, whose name was Ronald

Wilson, telephoned Ace and asked whether there were any

problems he should know about in the area, regarding water-

drainage patterns or frost heaves. Ronald had plans for a garden

and was interested in building an arbor to extend from the back

of the house. His wife, whose name was Ruth-Ann, was run-

ning for probate judge of the county. Ronald and Ruth-Ann

were tall and had perfect manners. They had no children.

Three days after the Wilsons moved in next door, Bonnie the

rabbit disappeared. She was on the porch, and then she was not.

Hoffman searched all afternoon for Bonnie. On Esther’s

recommendation, he spent that evening walking up and down

the road with a flashlight, looking to see if Bonnie had been hit

by a car. The next day, he walked through the woods behind the

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house, calling the rabbit for hours. He left a bowl of cut vegeta-

bles on the porch, with some fresh water. Several times during

the night, Hoffman got up to see whether Bonnie was on the

porch, eating the food. Eventually, he just wrapped himself in

blankets and lay down on the porch swing, keeping a vigil

beside the vegetables. He slept out there for a week, changing

the food every morning and evening, to keep the scent fresh.

Esther made a poster with a drawing of Bonnie (which

looked very much like a spaniel in her rendering) and a caption

reading: large rabbit missing. She stapled copies of the

poster on telephone poles throughout town and placed a notice

in the newspaper. Hoffman wrote a letter to the neighbors,

Ronald and Ruth-Ann Wilson, and slid it under their door. The

letter described Bonnie’s color and weight, gave the date and

time of her disappearance, and requested any information on

the subject at all. The Wilsons did not call with news, so the

next day Hoffman went over to their house and rang the door-

bell. Ronald Wilson answered.

“Did you get my letter? ” Hoffman asked.

“About the rabbit? ” Ronald said. “Have you found him? ”

“The rabbit is a girl. And the rabbit belongs to my daughter.

She was a gift. Have you seen her? ”

“She didn’t get in the road, did she? ”

“Is Bonnie in your house, Mr. Wilson? ”

“Is Bonnie the rabbit’s name? ”

“Yes.”

“How would Bonnie get in our house? ”

“Perhaps you have some broken window in the basement? ”

“You think she’s in our basement? ”

“Have you looked for her in your basement? ”

“No.”

“Can I look for her? ”

“You want to look for a rabbit in our basement? ”

The two men stared at each other for some time. Ronald

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Wilson was wearing a baseball cap, and he took it off and

rubbed the top of his head, which was balding. He put the

baseball cap back on.

“Your rabbit is not in our house, Mr. Hoffman, ” Wilson said.

“Okay, ” Hoffman said. “Okay. Sure.”

Hoffman walked back home. He sat at the kitchen table and

waited until Ace and Esther were both in the room to make his

announcement.

“They took her, ” he said. “The Wilsons took Bonnie.”

Hoffman started to build the tower in July. There was a row of

oak trees between Ace Douglas’s house and the Wilsons’ house,

and the leaves from these trees blocked Hoffman’s view into

their home. For several months, he’d been spending his nights

watching the Wilson house from the attic window with binocu-

lars, looking for Bonnie inside, but he could not see into the

lower floor rooms for the trees, and was frustrated. Ace reas-

sured him that the leaves would be gone by autumn, but Hoff-

man was afraid that Bonnie would be dead by autumn. This

was difficult for him to take. He was no longer allowed to go

over to the Wilsons’ property and look into the basement win-

dows, since Ruth-Ann Wilson had called the police. He was no

longer allowed to write threatening letters. He was no longer

allowed to call the Wilsons on the telephone. He had promised

Ace and Esther all of these things.

“He’s really harmless, ” Esther told Ruth-Ann Wilson, al-

though she herself was not sure this was the case.

Ronald Wilson found out somehow that Hoffman had been

in prison, and he’d contacted the parole officer, who contacted

Hoffman and suggested that he leave the Wilsons alone.

“If you would only let him search your home for the rabbit, ”

Ace Douglas had suggested gently to the Wilsons, “this would

be over very quickly. Just give him a half-hour to look around.

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It’s just that he’s concerned that Bonnie is trapped in your

basement.”

“We did not move here to let murderers into our home, ”

Ronald Wilson said.

“He’s not a murderer, ” Esther protested, somewhat lamely.

“He scares my wife.”

“I don’t want to scare your wife, ” Hoffman said.

“He’s really harmless, ” Esther insisted. “Maybe you could buy

him a new rabbit.”

“I don’t want any new rabbit.”

“You scare my wife, ” Ronald repeated. “We don’t owe you any

rabbit at all.”

In late spring, Hoffman cut down the smallest oak tree be-

tween the two houses. He did it on a Monday afternoon, when

the Wilsons were at work and Esther was performing magic for

a Girl Scouts’ party and Ace was shopping. Hoffman had pur-

chased a chain saw weeks earlier and had been hiding it. The

tree wasn’t very big, but it fell at a sharp diagonal across the

Wilsons’ back yard, narrowly missing their arbor and destroying

a substantial corner of the garden.

The police came. After a great deal of negotiating, Ace

Douglas was able to prove that the oak tree, while between the

two houses, was actually on his property, and it was his right to

have it cut down. He offered to pay generously for the damages.

Ronald Wilson came over to the house again that night, but he

would not speak until Ace sent Hoffman from the room.

“Do you understand our situation? ” he asked.

“I do, ” Ace said. “I honestly do.”

The two men sat at the kitchen table across from each other

for some time. Ace offered to get Ronald some coffee, which he

refused.

“How can you live with him? ” Ronald asked.

Ace did not answer this but got himself some coffee. He

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opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of milk, which

he smelled and then poured down the sink. After this, he

smelled his cup of coffee, which he poured down the sink, as

well.

“Is he your boyfriend? ” Ronald asked.

“Is Richard my boyfriend? No. He’s my very good friend.

And he’s my brother-in-law.”

“Really, ” Ronald said. He was working his wedding band

around his finger, as though he were screwing it on tight.

“You thought it was a dream come true to buy that nice old

house, didn’t you? ” Ace Douglas asked. He managed to say this

in a friendly, sympathetic way.

“Yes, we did.”

“But it’s a nightmare, isn’t it? Living next to us? ”

“Yes, it is.”

Ace Douglas laughed, and Ronald Wilson laughed, too.

“It’s a complete fucking nightmare, actually.”

“I’m very sorry that your wife is afraid of us, Ronald.”

“Well.”

“I truly am.”

“Thank you. It’s difficult. She’s a bit paranoid sometimes.”

“Well, ” Ace said, again in a friendly and sympathetic way.

“Imagine that. Paranoid! In this neighborhood? ”

The two men laughed again. Meanwhile, in the other room,

Esther was talking to her father.

“Why’d you do it, Dad? ” she asked. “Such a pretty tree.”

He had been weeping.

“Because I am so sad, ” he said, finally. “I wanted them to

feel it.”

“To feel how sad you were? ” she said.

“To feel how sad I am, ” he told her. “How sad I am.”

Anyway, in July he started to build the tower.

Ace had an old pickup truck, and Hoffman drove it to the

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municipal dump every afternoon so that he could look for wood

and scrap materials. He built the base of the tower out of pine

reinforced with parts of an old steel bed frame. By the end of

July, the tower was over ten feet high. He wasn’t planning on

building a staircase inside, so it was a solid cube.

The Wilsons called the zoning board, which fined Ace

Douglas for erecting an unauthorized structure on his property,

and insisted that the work stop immediately.

“It’s only a tree house, ” Esther lied to the zoning officer.

“It’s a watchtower, ” Hoffman corrected. “So that I can see

into the neighbors’ house.”

The zoning officer gave Hoffman a long, empty look.

“Yes, ” Hoffman said. “This truly is a watchtower.”

“Take it down, ” said the zoning officer to Esther. “Take it

down immediately.”

Ace Douglas owned a significant library of antique magic

books, including several volumes that Hoffman himself had

brought over from Hungary during the Second World War, and

which had been old and valuable even then. Hoffman had

purchased these rare books from Gypsies and dealers across

Europe with the last of his family’s money. Some volumes were

written in German, some in Russian, some in English.

The collection revealed the secrets of parlor magic, or draw-

ing room magic, a popular pursuit of educated gentlemen at

the turn of the century. The books spoke not of tricks, but

of “diversions, ” which were sometimes magical maneuvers but

were just as often simple scientific experiments. Often, these

diversions involved hypnosis, or the appearance of hypnosis, or

would not be successful without a trained conspirator among

the otherwise susceptible guests. A gentleman might literally

use smoke and a mirror to evoke a ghost within the parlor. A

gentleman might read a palm or levitate a tea tray. A gentleman

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might simply demonstrate that an egg could stand on its end, or

that magnets could react against one another, or that an electric

current could turn a small motorized contrivance.

The books were exquisitely illustrated. Hoffman had given

them to Ace Douglas back in the 1950s, because he had hoped

for some time to re-create this lost European conjury in Pitts-

burgh. He had hoped to decorate a small area within the Phar-

aoh’s Palace in the manner of a formal upper-middle-class

Hungarian drawing room, and to dress Ace in spats and kid

gloves. Ace did study the books. But he found that there was no

way to accurately replicate most of the diversions. The old tricks

all called for common household items which were simply not

common anymore: a box of paraffin, a pinch of snuff, a dab of

beeswax, a spittoon, a watch fob, a ball of cork, a sliver of saddle

soap. Even if such ingredients could be gathered, they would

have no meaning to modern spectators. It would be museum

magic. It would move nobody.

To Hoffman, this was a considerable disappointment. As

a very young man he had watched the Russian charlatan and

swindler necromancer Katanovsky perform such diversions in

his mother’s drawing room. His mother, recently widowed,

wore dark gowns decorated with china-blue silk ribbons pre-

cisely the same shade as the famous blue vials of Hoffman’s

Rose Water. Her face was that of a determined regent. His

sisters, in childish pinafores, regarded Katanovsky in a pretty

stupor of wonder. Gathered in the drawing room as a family,

they had all heard it. Hoffman himself — his eyes stinging

from phosphorous smoke — had heard it: the unmistakable

voice of his recently dead father speaking through Katanovsky’s

own dark mouth. A father’s message (in perfectly accentless

Hungarian!) of reassurement. A thrilling, intimate call to faith.

And so it was unfortunate for Hoffman that Ace Douglas

could not replicate this diversion. He would’ve liked to see it

tried again. It must have been a very simple swindle, although

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The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick

an antique one. Hoffman would have liked to hear the hoax

voice of his dead father repeated and explained to him fully and

— if necessary — repeated again.

On the first day of September, Hoffman woke at dawn and

began preparing his truck. Months later, during the court pro-

ceedings, the Wilsons’ attorney would attempt to show that

Hoffman had stockpiled weapons in the bed of the truck, an

allegation that Esther and Ace would contest heatedly. Cer-

tainly there were tools in the truck — a few shovels, a sledge-

hammer, and an ax — but if these were threatening, they were

not so intentionally.

Hoffman had recently purchased several dozen rolls of black

electrical duct tape, and at dawn he began winding the tape

around the body of the truck. He wound the tape, and then

more tape over the existing tape, and he did this again and

again, as armor.

Esther had an early-morning flute class to teach, and she got

up to eat her cereal. From the kitchen window, she saw her

father taping his pickup. The headlights and taillights were

already covered and the doors were sealed shut. She went out-

side.

“Dad? ” she said.

And Hoffman said, almost apologetically, “I’m going over

there.”

“Not to the Wilsons’? ”

“I’m going in after Bonnie, ” he said.

Esther walked back to the house, feeling somewhat shaky.

She woke Ace Douglas, who looked from his bedroom window

down at Hoffman in the driveway and called the police.

“Oh, not the police, ” Esther said. “Not the police...”

Ace held her in a hug for some time.

“Are you crying? ” he asked.

“No, ” she lied.

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“You’re not crying? ”

“No. I’m just sad.”

When the duct tape ran out, Hoffman circled the truck and

noticed that he had no way to enter it now. He took the sledge-

hammer from the flatbed and lightly tapped the passenger-side

window with it, until the glass was evenly spider-webbed. He

gently pushed the window in. The glass crystals landed silently

on the seat. He climbed inside but noticed that he had no keys,

so he climbed out of the broken window again and walked into

the house, where he found his keys on the kitchen table. Esther

wanted to go downstairs to try to talk to him, but Ace Douglas

would not let her go. He went down himself and said, “I’m

sorry, Richard. But I’ve called the police.”

“The police? ” Hoffman repeated, wounded. “Not the police,

Ace.”

“I’m sorry.”

Hoffman was silent for a long time. Staring at Ace. “But I’m

going in there after Bonnie, ” he said, finally.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“But they have her, ” Hoffman said, and he was weeping.

“I don’t believe that they do have her, Richard.”

“But they stole her! ”

Hoffman snatched up his keys and climbed back into his

taped-up truck, still weeping. He drove over to the Wilsons’

home, and he circled it several times. He drove through the

corn in the garden. Ruth-Ann Wilson came running out, and

she pulled up some bricks that were lining her footpath, and she

chased after Hoffman, throwing the bricks at his truck and

screaming.

Hoffman pulled the truck up to the slanting metal basement

doors of the Wilsons’ house. He tried to drive right up on them,

but his truck didn’t have the power, and the wheels sank into the

wet lawn. He honked in long, forlorn foghorn blasts.

When the police arrived, Hoffman would not come out. He

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would, however, put his hands on the steering wheel to show

that he was not armed.

“He doesn’t have a gun, ” Esther shouted from within Ace

Douglas’s house.

Two officers circled the truck and examined it. The younger

officer tapped on Hoffman’s window and asked him to roll it

down, but he refused.

“Tell them to bring her outside! ” he shouted. “Bring the

rabbit and I will come out of the truck! Terrible people! ”

The older officer cut through the duct tape on the passenger-

side door with a utility knife. He was able, finally, to open the

door, and when he did that, he reached in and dragged Hoff-

man out, cutting both of their arms on the sparkling glass of the

broken window. Outside the truck, Hoffman lay on the grass in

a limp sprawl, facedown. He was handcuffed and taken away in

a squad car.

Ace and Esther followed the police to the station, where the

officers took Hoffman’s belt and his fingerprints. Hoffman was

wearing only an undershirt, and his cell was small, empty, and

chilly.

Esther asked the older police officer, “May I go home and

bring my father back a jacket? Or a blanket? ”

“You may, ” said the older police officer, and he patted her arm

with a sort of sympathetic authority. “You may, indeed.”

Back home, Esther washed her face and took some aspirins.

She called the mother of her flute student and canceled that

morning’s class. The mother wanted to reschedule, but Esther

could only promise to call later. She noticed the milk on the

kitchen counter and returned it to the refrigerator. She brushed

her teeth. She changed into warmer autumn boots, and she

went to the living room closet and found a light wool blanket

for her father. She heard a noise.

Esther followed the noise, which was that of a running auto-

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mobile engine. She went to the window of the living room and

parted the curtain. In the Wilsons’ driveway was a van with

markings on the side indicating that it belonged to the ASPCA.

There were grills on the windows of this vehicle. Esther said

aloud, “Oh, my.”

A man in white coveralls came out of the Wilsons’ front door,

carrying a large wire cage. Inside the cage was Bonnie.

Esther had never been inside the local ASPCA building, and

she did not go inside it that day. She parked near the van, which

she had followed, and watched as the man in the coveralls

opened the back doors and pulled out a cage. This cage held

three gray kittens, which he carried into the building, leaving

the van doors open.

When the man was safely inside, Esther got out of her car

and walked quickly to the back of the van. She found the cage

with Bonnie, opened it easily, and pulled out the rabbit. Bonnie

was much thinner than last time Esther had seen her, and the

rabbit eyed her with an absolutely expressionless gaze of non-

recognition. Esther carried Bonnie to her car and drove back to

the police station.

Once in that parking lot, she tucked the rabbit under her left arm. She got out of the car and wrapped the light wool blanket

she’d brought for her father completely around herself. Esther

walked briskly into the police station. She passed the older

police officer, who was talking to Ace Douglas and Ronald

Wilson. She raised her right hand as she walked near the men

and said solemnly, “How, palefaces.”

Ace smiled at her, and the older police officer waved her by.

Hoffman’s jail cell was at the end of a hallway, and it was

poorly lit. Hoffman had not been sleeping well for several

weeks, and he was cold and cut. The frame of his glasses was

cracked, and he had been weeping since that morning. He saw

Esther approaching, wrapped in the light gray wool blanket,

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The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick

and he saw in her the figure of his mother, who had worn cloaks

against the Budapest winters and had also walked with a par-

ticular dignity.

Esther approached the cell, and she reached her hand be-

tween the bars toward her father, who rose with a limp to meet

that hand. In a half-mad moment, he half-imagined her to be a

warm apparition of his mother, and, as he reached for her, she

smiled.

Her smile directed his gaze from her hand to her face, and

in that instant, Esther pulled her arm back out of the cell,

reached into the folds of the blanket around her, and grace-

fully produced the rabbit. She slid Bonnie — slimmer now, of

course — through the iron bars and held the rabbit aloft in the

cell, exactly where her empty hand had been only a moment

before. Such that Hoffman, when he glanced down from Es-

ther’s smile, saw a rabbit where before there had been no rabbit

at all. Like a true enchantment, something appeared from the

common air.

“Behold, ” suggested Esther.

Richard Hoffman beheld the silken rabbit and recognized

her as his Bonnie. He collected her into his square hands. And

then, after that, he did behold his own daughter Esther.

A most gifted young woman.

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