He worked as an escapist on Coney Island, but not having much luck at that, took up wing-walking and barnstorming. During this time, he pitched a few innings of Triple-A baseball in the Jewish leagues. Sometime after ratting out New York gangster Olga Cimaglia, Fortunov relocated to Los Angeles, California where he changed his name to Dominic Fortune and became a costumed adventurer for hire and a mercenary. By 1934 he was involved in the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay – fighting as a pilot for both sides before returning to Los Angeles, where he took a job guarding three "out of control and drunken" film stars. Trying to unravel a plot to kill him, he travelled to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, and eventually foiled a plot by American Fifth Columnists to kill President Roosevelt and his wife and gain important funding from the Germans and Italians to support Nazi sympathisers in the U.S. Not long afterwards, he fell in with Sabbath Raven, the owner of the "Mississippi Queen", a floating casino moored just outside US territorial waters, where he enjoyed a romantic relationship with her and they shared many of his adventures.