New York, 1931. While many people were unemployed and poor during the Depression, gangster-owned speakeasies and nightclubs created a new mobster aristocracy. One top mobster is Jack ""Legs"" Diamond -- known to the Underworld as ""the Clay Pigeon"" because of the many times he'd been shot at, and survived. Although he's married, Jack Diamond carries on openly with lovely canary Dawn Dolan, who sings at the Hotsey Totsey Club, a nightclub Jack owns; his philandering is in the newspapers all the time. The mob hates all the publicity he is drawing to himself-- and therefore might draw to them. When Jack gets his picture taken for the newspapers once too often, there's another rubout attempt on Jack; again, he survives, but the 19-year-old parking valet standing next to him gets hit by the shotgun blasts.