Rocky Fortune — 1953

The first show. Shucking oysters at the 50 Fathoms Clam House, Rocky finds a pearl in each of his first dozen -- then gets beaten up in an alley and taken on an unplanned sea voyage.

Behind the wheel as a hired chauffeur, Rocky finds the job is the setup for a killing meant to look like an accident -- and the motive is an insurance payout.

Rocky signs on as a steward on the Bermuda-to-New York run. When jewels go missing at sea he is in exactly the wrong place, and takes the frame for it.

Nights behind the counter of an all-night diner between a saloon and a dance hall bring Rocky nobody but trouble -- in this case a nine-year-old in a cowboy suit carrying a shoebox with fifty thousand dollars in it.

A thousand dollars to carry one package into a bad neighborhood sounds like the best wage Rocky ever drew. Then come a tough blind woman, a murder, and five thousand more.

Rocky picks up a few dollars on bass with a small combo. He has played weddings and bar mitzvahs before; this booking turns out to be closer to a funeral, and nearly his own.

Rocky takes $48.50 a week to keep a drunken and thoroughly hated drama critic alive. The critic is stabbed on opening night anyway.

Sent by the agency to play parlor maid to a roomful of plaster statues, Rocky watches one of them turn green -- which interests a wealthy collector far more than it should.

Rocky goes looking for work at a carnival and meets a magician with a disappearing act. The trick is meant for him, and it is meant to be permanent.

Rocky is hired to mind a chimpanzee. He does not mind being made a monkey of, he says, until he finds out the monkey is dead.

The Christmas show. Two weeks' work as an auxiliary store detective, answering a department store's holiday ad, lands Rocky in a plot to murder Santa Claus.

Two heavies mistake Rocky for a prizefighter called the Great Gondolfo and will not hear otherwise. He wins his bout, which surprises him -- until he learns why, and what the gamblers have planned for him.