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This is the way I heard it. The player sat at the end of Jilly's Bar and surveyed the room like Sinatra, who was a personal friend of Jilly's, and Judy Garland, who had just left a few minutes earlier. The player was what you'd call a regular in this legendary Manhattan gin joint. A familiar fixture the tourists might encounter on any given weeknight as he worked his way through his habitual bottle of vodka. He was also a legendary ladies man.

And on this particular evening, he had his eye on a beautiful brunette at the far end of the bar.

Good eye, boss. Who is she?

Edie was a natural wingman, big fellow who had bailed out his boss more than once, haven't seen her around. The players said, I think I'd have remembered. I guess so, said Edie, her friends. Not so bad either. Sitting next to the brunette was a shapely blonde that was right up Eddie's alley.

Maybe they were a package deal. The player pivoted slightly on his stool and waited for the brunette to look over. It was only a matter of time.

They always looked over because they could always sense his gaze, a warm and friendly gaze with a hint of mischief that made him, according to one of his several wives, positively charismatic.

The brunette looked over right on cue, dark eyes, full lips, a tight red dress with a plunging neckline.

The player threw back his seventh vodka sour and lipped a cigarette from his fourth pack of the day. The confidence oozed out of him, like the smoke that trailed from his nostrils as he strolled to the far end of the bar, radiating a unique blend of irresistible insouciance, sublime urbanity and Midwestern charm that he followed a few feet behind large and clumsy in comparison.

As they approached, the brunette laughed and said, Well, isn't this a surprise? I planned on seeing you both tonight, but not here.

Eddie stood behind the player, smiling broadly. Are you saying you like to watch the brunette arch an eyebrow but said nothing? Forgive my sidekick, said the player. He sometimes forgets that I take care of the jokes. Nothing to forgive, said the brunette.

I do like to watch. I mean, really, who doesn't? The players smiled and offered the brunette a cigarette. She accepted, then he pulled a flame from mid-air, lighting her cigarette with some practiced sleight of hand. The girls were delighted to have quick hands.

The blonde said, Are you a magician, too? I dabble, said the player. I imagine you do, said the brunette. And the other tricks up your sleeve. Well, said the player. It's ambitious, but I bet I could make that dress of yours disappear. Eddie marveled at the way his boss could get away with anything. A lot of men, especially after seven vodka sours, would sound oafish and creepy with that kind of talk.

But the player was as charming as he was. Shameless. Of course, it's not the sort of trick I can attempt here in Jilly's, but my penthouse is just down the street.

How about the four of us grab a nightcap there. Maybe I'll let you pull a rabbit out of my hat.

According to Jilly Rizzo, who watched it all unfold from behind his bar, the men appeared from nowhere for large gentleman of Italian descent. Two of them pushed Eddie to the side, the other to yank the player off his stool, dragged him out the door and threw him down a flight of stairs, at which point they began the time honored process of kicking him to death. Apparently, the brunette in the red dress was the goomar of a local wiseguy, a powerful figure, and the Colombo crime family who took umbrage at the players overtures toward his boss's mistress.

Luckily, Gelee had the respect of the mob, many of whom like to frequent his establishment. Gelee ran down the stairs and persuaded the Italian gentleman to spare one of his very best customers. Fine, said the wise guy, he don't have to die here. But make no mistake, he's going to die. This punk is a dead man walking.

And so the player awakened the next morning to battered and bruised to go to work and too scared to leave his apartment, Eddie told the president of NBC that the Mafia had taken a contract out on his boss. It was almost too incredible to believe. But when the terrified player failed to report to work for three consecutive days, it became clear that something would have to be done. And so David Tebbit, a powerful executive at NBC, called George Would, a powerful agent at William Morris.

George would then call it a shady guy who knew and even shadier guy. And before long, Joseph Colombo, himself head of one of New York's infamous five families, was on the phone with NBC executives discussing the future of the ladies man currently marked for murder.

It was not the kind of call a mob boss would typically take, but as it turns out, NBC had something that Joseph Colombo wanted exposure. You see, Colombo had recently formed an anti defamation group called the Italian American Civil Rights League. Its stated purpose was to, quote, combat pejorative stereotypes about Italian Americans. And Colombo was trying to get the media to cover their first annual rally. But of course, the press knew the Italian American Civil Rights League was, in fact, a shameless attempt by a known mobster to portray the mafia as victims, victims of discrimination and stereotyping.

Obviously, no respectful news organization would agree to cover a pro Italian rally that was in reality, a parade subsidized by the mob. But NBC was desperate. They needed their star player back on the job and the mob needed some friendly press. So the network made the mob an offer they couldn't refuse. In exchange for the nullification of a hit on their star player, NBC agreed to report on the Italian American Civil Rights League as if they were a legitimate organization.

And so on June 28th, 1970, when a parade of mobsters marched through the streets of New York, NBC News covered the event as if it were an authentic celebration of honest, hardworking Italian Americans and not some random assemblage of Sicilian thugs.

In return, Joseph Colombo removed the name of a certain ladies man from that week's list of people scheduled to be whacked.

Thus, the player who everybody loved to watch was back on stage with Eddie, enchanting his eight million nightly viewers with the unique blend of irresistible insouciance, sublime urbanity and Midwestern charm. Such were the enduring assets of the amateur magician from Nebraska who almost made his own life disappear when he chatted up the wrong girl.

A very close call indeed for a wing man named Eddie McMahon, who would have been out of a job had the mob fulfilled the hit on his boss, the undisputed king of late night and a real player named Johnny Carson. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.