Free Funnymen by Ted Heller

singing,” Flo says to him. “That's how your father and I got started.”
    â€œLook, if it was up to me, you'd belt out thirty songs up there. And there wouldn't be an ashtray or a pair of eyeglasses intact within a hundred miles. But this is business.”
    Harry said, “I think this is something your mother and I should talk about.”
    And Zig said, “Okay. Then talk about it.” And he—knowing quite well that Harry had meant talking about it alone, in private—just leaned back in his chair.
    Flo turned to Harry and said, “All right, Harry, all right. No more singing then. Fine.”
    Harry said to her, “You sure, darling?”
    She nodded and Ziggy said, “I'm glad you seen it my way,” and then walked out.
    When he left the room, it was like Himmler had just left after an interrogation. We could breathe again.
    â€œUncle Harry,” I said, “are you sure you just did the right thing?”
    He said, “The right thing? No. The right thing would be to ship him off to a nuthouse, that would be the right thing. What we just did, Sally, was make sure we have our next few meals and a roof over our heads and can afford to be buried properly. Which might be any day now!”

    SNUFFY DUBIN [comedian]: I was offered the emcee's job at the Mohican Club and I grabbed it. It was a good house, two hundred seats and thethree b's: bands, booze, and broads. Johnny Nelson's band was the house band, Tina Mitchell sang for them, and Benny Lampone was the owner on paper. But Big Al Pompiere and a few other Jersey characters were the real owners.
    I met Ziggy at the Mohican and, man, we just clicked. Same age, same backgrounds—him from New York and me from Chicago—we grew up poor and my father was in show business too. He was a cantor—Pavarotti with payess , no shit. Ziggy and me were friends, but there was a mutual jealousy thing maybe too: you know, he was a performer already and was flat-out hilarious and he just destroyed people up there, so yeah, I envied that, sure. He was a comic genius, even at that age. See, some people, some comedians, they just have that raw comic instinct. They're born with it. Me, I had to work and work and teach myself that instinct.
    But, yeah, jealousy. I was—back then, at least—a slim guy and there were girls around, and I went out and had a good time. I don't think that Ziggy had even kissed a girl yet.
    Well, we fixed that.
    Zig and I are hangin' at the bar one night and it's me, him, and this colored cat named Jimmy Powell. He cleaned up for us but let me tell you, that man could dress. Silk and satin all over the place and the fucking shiniest white shoes you ever saw, a real hepcat, and where he got the money for his threads . . . well, who knew?
    It's way after hours and me and Zig are telling jokes and shooting the shit and the subject gets onto girls. As in, where do you get one in this town?
    I told him, “Ziggy, it's four in the A.M.—any girl you get right now, you don't wanna get.”
    â€œOh yeah?” he says. “Then where is she?”
    He looks down at the floor and that's when I realize, hey, this guy's never been within one foot of a broad. I call Jimmy Powell over. He's maybe forty-five years old and as skinny as a sewing needle.
    We piled into my Hudson Essex Terraplane and Jimmy tells us where to go.
    We ended up in Newark. It was really dark out, I remember that, and it's this neighborhood, warehouses and factories and not a soul on the street.
    We get out of the car and walk into this building, like a three-story townhouse. It's a bordello. Big surprise, right? Well, it was a surprise because this was no rundown dingy whorehouse, this was a very, very flashy joint. Velvet all over the place, velvet curtains and rugs from Afghanistan or Persia, moldings in the wall, sconces and candelabras and gold lamps and furniture from eighteenth-century France.
    There's a living room and