The Strip was his refuge.

The magic shops specifically. Of which there were many; Las Vegas is known among performers around the world as the Capital of Magic. The boy found that these shops were more than just retail outlets; they were places where aspiring, performing and retired magicians hung out to share stories and tricks and to gossip.

It was in one of these that the boy learned something important about himself.

He might be skinny and timid and a slow runner but he was miraculously dexterous. The magicians here would show him palms and pinches and drops and conceals and he'd pick them up instantly. One of these clerks lifted an eyebrow and said about the thirteen-year-old, "A born prestidigitator."

The boy frowned, never having heard the word.

"A French magician made it up in the eighteen hundreds," the man explained. "'Tresti—' As in presto, fast. 'Digit.' As in finger. Prestidigitation—fast fingers. Sleight of hand."

So maybe, he slowly came to believe, he was someone more than odd man out in the family, something more than knuckle bait at the playground. Every day he'd leave school at 3:10 and head directly to his favorite store, where he'd hang out and sop up method. At home he practiced constantly. One of the shop managers would hire him occasionally to put on demonstrations and brief shows for customers in the Magic Cavern in the back of the store.

He could still picture clearly his initial performance. From that day on Young Houdini—his first stage name—would talk, or bully, his way up onto stage at any opportunity. What a joy it was to mesmerize his audience, delight them, sell them the medicine, trick them. To scare them too. He liked to scare them.

Finally he got busted—by his mother. The woman eventually realized that the boy hardly spent any time at home and raided his room to learn why. "I found this money," she snapped, rising from her dinner and waddling into the kitchen one evening to confront him as he walked in the back door. "Explain."

"It's from Abracadabra."

"Who's that?"

"The store? By the Tropicana. I was telling you about it—"

"You stay off the Strip."

"Mom, it's just a store. That magic store."

"Where you been? Drinking? Let me smell your breath."

"Mom, no." Backing away, repulsed by the massive woman in the pasta-sauce-stained top, her own breath horrific.

"They catch you in a casino, I could lose my job. Your father could lose his."

"I was just at the store. I do a little show. People give me tips sometimes."

"That's too much for tip money. I never got tips like that when I was a hostess."

"I'm good," the boy said.

"So was I. . . . Show? What kind of show?"

"Magic" He was frustrated. He'd told her this months before. "Watch."

He did a card trick for her.