Acts of Violet(29)
CAMERON FRANK: You’d never met Violet before that day?
ACE MORGAN: No. And to be perfectly frank, I was pissed off when I saw that card come out of the cake. I thought the Yanoffs had hired a second magician—god knows why, I was one of the best in the tristate area. But I never saw a little girl perform like that. When she levitated, I almost pissed myself.
CAMERON FRANK: At the time, you told everyone she was part of the show.
ACE MORGAN: Of course I did. What was I gonna do, say she’s some kind of superhero? Invite the news, the government, and religious wackos to put her under a microscope? She was a little girl. And I wanted to see what else she was capable of.
CAMERON FRANK: So you claimed to be her mentor.
ACE MORGAN: I was her mentor. From the second I saw her floating in the air like that, I knew I had to … I don’t know, look after her somehow.
CAMERON FRANK: You’ve given some conflicting accounts of your relationship with Volk over the years.
ACE MORGAN: It was always strictly professional. No funny business.
CAMERON FRANK: I’m referring to your professional relationship. Which, according to public record, lasted over ten years. You helped her develop her act when she moved to New York and even helped her get her job at Marabou, correct?
ACE MORGAN: All true. I only saw her once in a while when she was a kid—I’d make time whenever I was in the area for a gig. Always under adult supervision, in case anyone has the wrong idea. I was living in New York back then and told her if she wanted to be serious about performing magic, she’d be better off moving to a city that would offer more opportunities for entertainers. After she graduated high school, I helped her find a place in Brooklyn and offered to hook her up with a waitressing gig at Marabou, since I was friendly with the manager. I warned her, even though the place tried to pass itself off as classy, it was still a titty bar. That didn’t bother her. She just wanted to start making money. And as soon as she saw the girls onstage were the ones who got the real tips, she asked a couple of them to teach her burlesque while I coached her on sleights. Before long she was making those big tips, too.
CAMERON FRANK: It sounds like it was pretty easy for Violet to establish herself in New York.
ACE MORGAN: It’s easy when you got a sucker like me pulling strings on your behalf. And when you’re not afraid to take off your clothes to make an extra buck. In all fairness, she did work hard. Instead of partying with the other girls, she used most of her free time to rehearse her act and hone her sleights. Mind you, she did fool around with a couple of the girls, and I heard a couple others left because she fooled around with their boyfriends, but that was none of my business.
Anyway, no matter how messy her personal life was, the magic always came first. Violet told me she spent at least an hour a day doing finger and hand exercises to improve her dexterity. It showed—I never saw someone get that good that fast. Performing magic was always the ultimate goal, and she saw burlesque as a way to get on a stage and develop her act until she was ready to branch off on her own.
CAMERON FRANK: After the levitation incident at the birthday party, did you ever see her do anything similarly … strange?
ACE MORGAN: Like supernatural? Come on, gimme a break. What made her special was how she’d learn something and put her own spin on it. At Marabou, it was often raunchy, like an Ambitious Card routine where the signed card would reappear in her bra or garter.
Look, once you know what to look for, the mechanics of most tricks are pretty easy to figure out. Even levitations, there’s a few standard ways those are done. The way Violet did hers … sometimes it was puzzling. Her execution, the flair she added, made it hard to pin down her methods. Like she’d make a newspaper float up and burst into flames, then make a glass of water levitate across the room and put out the fire. I never saw anyone else do that.
CAMERON FRANK: Was she difficult to mentor?
ACE MORGAN: Sometimes … She liked to push things. Which could be good, because she was a quick learner and always wanted to learn more. But she’d get bored with me after a while. She had to find a way to make things more dangerous, more extreme.
CAMERON FRANK: And how did she do that?
ACE MORGAN: By rigging private high-stakes poker games.
CAMERON FRANK: Violet publicly denied ever doing such a thing.
ACE MORGAN: Is that something you’d fess up to, especially when your bread is being buttered by one of Vegas’s biggest casino hotels?
CAMERON FRANK: Did her uncle get her involved in those poker games?
ACE MORGAN: There wasn’t a serious backroom card game between New York and Atlantic City that Slava didn’t know about. And he was begging that girl to join his racket as soon as he saw her act at Marabou. Though if you ask me, the bigger transgression was watching his barely legal niece strip down to pasties and a thong. I felt like a creep watching her perform and I’m not even related to her. Call me old-fashioned. But apparently, she invited him, hoping he’d see her potential as a ringer.
CAMERON FRANK: It sounds like she was making steady progress in her career at that point. Why get involved in anything illegal?
ACE MORGAN: Why do people go skydiving and bungee jumping? For the goddamn thrill of it. Violet needed a sense of risk or life got really dull really fast for her. There was no room for error with the crowds Slava introduced her to. If she was caught in a false shuffle or crooked deal, she wouldn’t get booed or laughed at. We’re talking much more serious consequences. And I’ll tell you what, she took her card manip to the next level, thanks to those games. Stashed away some good money, too.