A near ringer for Zeppo, the “normal” Marx Brother, Clifton was tall, dark and horsily handsome, his slicked-back, parted-at-the side hair as black as his tie and tux. He was at the microphone, leaning on it like a jokester Sinatra, the orchestra behind him, accompanying him occasionally on song parodies, the drummer providing the requisite rimshots, the boys laughing heartily at gags they’d heard over and over, prompting the audience.
Not that the audience needed help: the crowd thought Clifton was a scream. And, for a Thursday night, it was a good crowd, too.
“Hear about the gu that bought his wife a bicycle?” he asked innocently. “Now she’s peddling it all over town.”
They howled at that.
“Hear about the sleepy bride?…. She couldn’t stay away awake for a second.”
Laughter all around me, I was settled in at a table for two-by myself-listening to one dirty joke after another. Clifton had always worked blue, back when I knew him; he’d been the opening act at the Colony Club showroom on Rush Street-a mob joint fronted by Nicky Dean, a crony of Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti.
But tonight, every gag was filthy.
“Hear about the girl whose boyfriend didn’t have any furniture? She was floored.”
People were crying at this rapier wit. But not everybody liked it. The guy Clifton was fronting for, in particular.
“Nate,” Frank Nitti had said to me earlier that afternoon, “I need you to deliver a message to your old pal Pete Clifton.”
In the blue shade of an umbrella at a small white metal table, buttery sun reflecting off the shimmer of cool blue water, Nitti and I were sitting by the pool at Nitti’s Di Lido Island estate, his palatial digs looming around us, rambling white stucco buildings with green-tile roofs behind bougainvillea-covered walls.
Eyes a mystery behind sunglasses, Nitti wore a blue-and-red Hawaiian print shirt, white slacks and sandals, a surprisingly small figure, his handsome oval face flecked with occasional scars, his slicked back black hair touched with gray and immaculately trimmed. I was the one who looked like a gangster, in my brown suit and darker brown fedora, having just arrived from Chicago, Nitti’s driver picking me up at the railroad station.
“I wouldn’t call Clifton an ‘old pal,’ Mr. Nitti.”
“How many times I gotta tell ya, call me, ‘Frank’? After what we been through together?”
I didn’t like the thought of having been through anything “together” with Frank Nitti. But the truth was, fate and circumstance had on several key occasions brought Chicago’s most powerful gangster leader into the path of a certain lowly Loop private detective-though, I wasn’t as lowly as I used to be. The A-1 Agency had a suite of offices now, and I had two experienced ops and a pretty blonde secretary under me-or anyway, the ops were under me; the secretary wasn’t interested.
But when Frank Nitti asked the President of the A-1 to hop a train to Miami Beach and come visit, Nathan Heller hopped and visited-the blow softened by the three hundred dollar retainer check Nitti’s man Louis Campagna had delivered to my Van Buren Street office.
“I understand you two boys used to go out with showgirls and strippers, time to time,” Nitti said, lighting up a Cuban cigar smaller than a billy club.
“Clifton was a cocky, good-looking guy, and the toast of Rush Street. The girls liked him. I liked the spillover.”
Nitti nodded, waving out his match. “He’s still a good-looking guy. And he’s still cocky. Ever wonder how he managed to open up his own club?”
“Never bothered wondering. But I guess it is a little unusual.”
“Yeah. He ain’t famous. He ain’t on the radio.”
“Not with that material.”
Nitti blew a smoke ring; an eyebrow arched. “Oh, you remember that? How blue he works.”
I shrugged. “It was kind of a gimmick, Frank-clean-cut kid, looks like a matinee idol. Kind of a funny, startling contrast with his off-color material.”
“Well, that’s what I want you to talk to him about.”
“Afraid I don’t follow, Frank….”
“He’s workin’ too blue. Too goddamn fuckin’ filthy.”
I winced. Part of it was the sun reflecting off the surface of the pool; most of it was confusion. Why the hell did Frank Nitti give a damn if some two-bit comic was telling dirty jokes?
“That foulmouth is attracting the wrong kind of attention,” Nitti was saying. “The blue noses are gettin’ up in arms. Ministers are givin’ sermons, columnists are frownin’ in print. There’s this ‘Citizens Committee for Clean Entertainment.’ Puttin’ political pressure on. Jesus Christ! The place’ll get raided-shut down.”
I hadn’t been to Chez Clifton yet, though I assumed it was running gambling, wide-open, and was already on the cops’ no-raid list. But if anti-smut reformers made an issue out of Clifton’s immoral monologues, the boys in blue would have to raid the joint-and the gambling baby would go out the window with the dirty bathwater.
“What’s your interest in this, Frank?”
Nitti’s smile was mostly a sneer. “Clifton’s got a club ’cause he’s got a silent partner.”
“You mean…you, Frank? I thought the Outfit kept out of the Florida rackets….”
It was understood that Nitti, Capone and other Chicago mobsters with homes in Miami Beach would not infringe on the hometown gambling syndicate. This was said to be part of the agreement with local politicos to allow the Chicago Outfit to make Miami Beach their home away from home.
“That’s why I called you down here, Nate. I need somebody to talk to the kid who won’t attract no attention. Who ain’t directly connected to me. You’re just an old friend of Clifton’s from outa town.”
“And what do you want me to do, exactly?”
“Tell him to clean up his fuckin’ act.”
So now I was in the audience, sipping my rum and Coke, the walls ringing with laughter, as Pete Clifton made such deft witticisms as the following: “Hear about the doll who found a tramp under her bed? She got so upset, her stomach was on the bum all night.”
Finally, to much applause, Clifton turned the entertainment over to the orchestra, and couples filled the dancefloor to the strains of “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” Soon the comic had filtered his way through the admiring crowd to join me at my table.
“You look good, you rat bastard,” Clifton said, flashing his boyish smile, extending his hand, which I took and shook. “Getting any since I left Chicago?”
“I wet the wick on occasion,” I said, sitting as he settled in across from me. All around us patrons were sneaking peeks at the star performer who had deigned to come down among them.
“I didn’t figure you’d ever get laid again, once I moved on,” he said, straightening his black tie. “How long you down here for?”
“Couple days.”
He snapped his fingers, pointed at me and winked. “Tell you what, you’re goin’ boating with me tomorrow afternoon. These two cute skirts down the street from where I live, they’re both hot for me-you can take one of ’em offa my hands.”
Smiling, shaking my head, I said, “I thought maybe you’d have found a new hobby, by now, Pete.”
“Not me.” He fired up a Lucky Strike, sucked in smoke, exhaled it like dragon breath from his nostrils. “I never found a sweeter pasttime than doin’ the dirty deed.”
“Doing dames ain’t the only dirty deed you been doing lately, Pete.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Your act.” I gestured with my rum-and-Coke. “I’ve seen cleaner material on outhouse walls.”
He grinned toothily. “You offended? Getting prudish in your old age, Heller? Yeah, I’ve upped the ante, some. Look at this crowd, weeknight, off season. They love it. See, it’s my magic formula: everybody loves sex; and everybody loves a good dirty joke.”
“Not everybody.”
The grin eased off and his forehead tightened. “Wait a minute…. This isn’t a social call, is it?”