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Afterward, we hurried offstage, confused, dripping in flop sweat, and wondering what the hell had just happened. The club’s manager, a grin plastered across his narrow face, rushed over and threw his arms around us.

“I loved the earthquake bit,” he exclaimed. “Keep it in the act.”

Phil looked at me over the manager’s shoulder.

“It was an earthquake,” he mouthed.

“Oh my God,” I replied without making a sound. “Let’s not keep it in the act.”

We continued to shake things up, though, at the Last Frontier in Las Vegas and the Golden Hotel in Reno, where I met the young piano sensation of the time, Liberace. He was packing them in down the street, but one night he caught a bit of our act and told me that he thought I had some talent. You wouldn’t have known that from our reception at New York’s Blue Angel. The weekend tourists lapped up our act, but the more sophisticated Manhattanites who showed up during the week thought we were rubes—and we were fired.

Miami turned out to be our place. We headlined Martha Raye’s Five O’Clock Club for an entire season—all winter. I brought Margie, who felt like she was on a long vacation. It was a good time, one that got even better, almost too good to be true. One day, after leaving Margie in our room, I was on my way to meet Phil to discuss adding some new bits to the act when one of the men who ran the club directed me into his office.

He couldn’t have been friendlier as he closed the door and explained that Phil and I were doing an excellent job, but he especially liked me. He said that he was impressed with my singing, dancing, and all-around ability to entertain. He and his partner, he added, had noticed the way the audience related to me and they had a proposition for me.

“As you can tell, we think you have special talent,” he said. “Basically, we’d like to take you over.”

“You want to take over Phil’s and my act?” I asked.

“No, just you,” he said. “We’re looking at you as a single.”

“Well, thank you for the compliment,” I said, “but I still don’t understand the, um, proposal.”

He explained that he and his partner ran the club with a group of “silent investors,” men who, he said, preferred to stay in the background but who trusted their judgment of talent. He said they liked the way the audiences reacted to me and wanted to invest in my act.

“But I don’t have an act,” I said.

“We’ll help you build it,” he said, adding that they would get behind me in every way, from writing to PR to salary.

“Really?” I said.

“We’ll pay you fifteen thousand a week,” he said.

At the time, Phil and I were splitting less than 5 percent of that, or about seven hundred dollars a week. My eyes glazed over.

“It’s a good starting salary,” he continued. “We’ll have the act written. You’ll buy your wardrobe. And we’ll take care of all your bookings.”

Deep down I knew I was not going to leave my partner in the lurch, but the sum of money being offered was so fantastic that it was impossible to simply dismiss it. In truth, I was blown away. I did not know how to respond. Nor did I seem able to. My mouth seemed temporarily out of order. Finally I stammered a thank-you and explained that I would talk about it with my wife and agent and get back to him as soon as possible.

“You’re never going to believe what happened,” I told Margie.

Like me, she was speechless.

“How much money are they going to pay you?” she asked.

I returned to Earth after speaking to Phil’s and my Atlanta-based agent, Monk Arnold. He had me repeat the details, then woke me up from this dream of having arrived on easy street.

“Dick, they’re the Mob,” he said.

“You think?” I asked.

“Dick, if they get a hold of you like this, they’ve got you for the rest of your life.”

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling a wave of disappointment pass through me.

“Don’t fool with them,” Monk advised.

“It did sound too good,” I said.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” he said.

I had Monk Arnold call the guy back and tell him that I had too many commitments and would not feel right changing