The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (16 page)

Norma kept information on everybody who was anybody in her big black book: their identification marks, their nicknames—like Uncle, Sunshine, Shoestring, Pin, Toothpick, Licorice Stick, Cow-boy—how much they owed, how much they paid, when they were there, the girls they liked. She had them all, should it ever come to that. In the late fifties, at the height of her power and influence, someone asked Norma if there was anyone she
didn’t
have in her pocket. It took her a moment, then she said, “The President.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At the Mercy of the Trick

Norma never thought she’d survive in the business long enough to see a third generation of Good Men begin frequenting her house in the late fifties. J. Cornelius Rathborne III (Cocie, pronounced “Cokie,” to his friends) went to Norma’s for the first time when he was fourteen years old. He was taken there not by one of his family elders but by a friend who was a year or so older than he was. Norma opened the little window in the back door and recognized the young man. In the parlor she asked the new fellow his name, and Cocie told her. “Oh, yes,” she said, giving him the distinct impression that the name was familiar to her. She offered the boys a beer and chatted with them about school and where they’d been earlier in the evening. Then she asked how much money they had. The going rate was twenty dollars, but Cocie had only fifteen.

“Ten will do,” Norma said. She always left the boys a little “mad” money in case they had some emergency or needed a taxi.

The girls came into the parlor, some dressed formally, others in sexy little dresses, all with beautiful long hair—Norma wore the only short do in the house. The boys made their choices, Cocie’s girl brought him upstairs, and he found that he was a little nervous, somewhat
embarrassed too. But not because this was his first time; his father had already seen to it that he’d been initiated properly—he’d left nothing to chance and had one of his mistresses take Cocie to bed, a half Cherokee woman who told Cocie, “Make a woman happy, you’ll be happy.”

Cocie was embarrassed this night because Norma’s girl gave him quite a look-over. She began washing him carefully, explaining to him that he’d never have to worry about getting anything at Norma’s house. Cocie saw the wisdom of this and felt better. He remembered what his father’s Cherokee mistress had told him and had a damned good time that night.

Cocie went away to boarding school soon afterwards, but whenever he was home on break, he went down to the French Quarter. First he and his friends would go over to Bourbon Street, where they’d catch an act at one of the clubs, not dives with strippers but exotic dancers like Kalantan or Lilly Christine the Tiger Lady or Evangeline the Oyster Girl, who made her entrance out of a giant oyster shell and had green seaweed hair. Or they’d go to the Paddock Lounge to hear Fats Pichon, the Dukes of Dixieland, or Papa Celestin. Then they’d wind up the night at Norma’s, where they’d run into their friends and have a few drinks before going upstairs. They knew better than to show up drunk; if they did she wouldn’t let them in.

One night Norma turned them down, but not because they’d been drinking. She opened the little window, and when she saw them she said, “There are some people here I don’t think you boys would want to be seen by.” Cocie assumed somebody’s father had gotten there first.

Cocie unabashedly admitted going to Norma’s and said, “Hell, yes, use my name. I’m not embarrassed that I went there. Going to Norma’s was part of growing up in New Orleans—those of us lucky enough to have some money.”

But not all of the Good Men were willing to be so open. Another of Norma’s third-generation clients preferred that his name not be used.

The first time he introduced himself to Norma, she said, “I know your daddy.” She also knew his uncles, from a family of Jewish merchants. “Come on in, Sonny,” Norma said.

Sonny and his friends had a few drinks, then Norma let them know it was time to drink up and leave or go with one of the girls. Sonny followed his girl out to the courtyard and up the stairs to the balcony. The steps were low. She said, “Watch your head!”

“Yeah, right,” Sonny answered and walked right into a beam, which he did almost every time he went upstairs at Norma’s because his attention was always focused elsewhere—say on the nice way the girl’s dress stretched across her rear end.

Sonny and his friends liked to sit around the parlor and drink; it was a great late-night destination after they dropped off their dates. Sometimes their dates would sneak out after they got home, take the keys to their parents’ cars, and drive to Conti Street to see if the boys’ cars were parked at Norma’s. The boys felt as if they were at their own private country club.

But Norma’s was nothing so ordinary as a country club. For Sonny the biggest thrill came from knowing that what he was doing was against the law. He and his friends liked to talk about it afterwards; for Sonny the sex was anticlimactic.

Sonny didn’t know that after he grew up and went into the family business he would suddenly yearn to be a police officer. Eventually he joined the police reserves and went out on night patrol; he had a beat on Mardi Gras; he chased armed robbers; he was even shot. But when he was at Norma’s he got a taste of what it was like to be on the other side of the law.

A New Orleans lawyer whose family was from Colorado started going to Norma’s while he was a student at Tulane University. He wasn’t one of Norma’s third-generation Good Men who never needed a password; the first time he went to the house he had a password, but he had to talk his way in anyway. Norma started calling him Waterproof when he arrived one evening during a rainstorm.

Waterproof liked the passwords and the nicknames; he liked that it was all so risqué and that the police station was only a block away. But Waterproof never felt that he was in any particular danger.

Most of the Good Men, including the college students, went to Norma’s on a lark, with an innocent desire to live life in the fast lane
for a night now and then. They were made to feel important there, and they could have sex with girls who had the reputation of being the best in the business. They might not have known that some of the Good Women were going to Norma’s too—for sex with a man who broke the law of averages with his endowments: Pershing Gervais, who once charged a wealthy Uptown woman fifteen hundred dollars for his services, or Frankenstein the cabdriver.

But those were the people who were interested in straight sex. Some came for companionship—wealthy people who needed someone to talk to more than they needed sex. Others had indulged every hedonistic whim they could think of and went to Norma’s when they had run out of thrills. A girl like Simone would bathe them in golden showers and serve up hot lunches, fare not out of the ordinary in a lot of brothels.

Beyond the kinky and degenerate, though, were the true deviates, those who came to Norma’s with a desperate need they were unable to satisfy anywhere else.

One of these was a man from North Carolina. He wanted someone, anyone who would do it, to beat on his penis as hard as possible, even with a hammer. Most of the girls couldn’t handle that. They tried putting bobby pins on the skin of his prick, but that didn’t satisfy him.

He dealt mostly with Jackie, and it was several months before Norma met him. She was surprised by his looks. He was pale and terribly emaciated; she thought he looked as if he needed a transfusion. When she shook hands with him, his hand was like ice.

He continued to make trips to New Orleans every two to three months. One trip he got Terry, but he was not at all interested in Yum-Yum’s specialty. He asked her to stick needles in his penis. Terry did. She also hammered it. She didn’t mind the blood. The crueler she was, the more pleasurable it was to him, the more orgasms he had, and the sooner he had them.

After a while, though, needles and hammers weren’t enough; he asked Terry to cut his testicles with a razor blade and sew them back up. Terry complied. He had multiple orgasms. But this was very messy. Terry went out and bought a cover for the bed.

When Norma saw the room after one of these episodes, she was appalled: “This room looks like you’ve been butchering hogs!” Terry told her about the razor. Norma never would have dreamed that Terry, a pretty, dainty girl she knew to be very fastidious, could do such things. Terry was unfazed. “He pays well for it,” she said, “and he leaves happy.”

Norma, though, couldn’t get over thinking that Terry was callous. The razor blades were too much; she didn’t want the man to come to her house any longer.

The story got around, first to the girls at the house and then to the nightspots where they went, and Terry got a new nickname. Yum-Yum became known as Terry the Cutter.

One way Norma hid income was to have Gaspar Gulotta cash checks people gave her and run them through his business. Once a man gave her traveler’s checks for an evening of entertainment, and a week later Gaspar got a notice that the checks had bounced. According to a letter from American Express, they had been stolen.

Norma headed straight to the American Express office, where she described her customer as “outstanding because he was very short and inclined to be a humpback.” The clerk practically went into shock as she continued. “He has a big prick, and on one side of his leg not far from his prick is a birthmark.”

She informed the officer that she would contest it if the man continued to claim that his checks had been stolen. “I’m going to tell how he dropped his pants at Ten Twenty-six Conti Street for three or four hours and enjoyed it to the fullest.” Norma got her money.

Norma understood that, because she ran an illegitimate business, people were always going to try to take advantage of her, whether they were soldiers who demanded their money back after their fun upstairs and called the shore patrol to muscle her or Good Men’s progeny who liked the free drinks at the house. Even the Good Men themselves sometimes made unreasonable demands. Once one of them begged Norma to let a girl come to his house. He assured her that his wife was out of town. Against her better judgment, because the man was such a
good customer, Norma relented on a rule she’d made based on experience. Only an hour after her girl arrived the wife barged in—she’d set her husband up with a phony vacation story. She took a swipe at the girl and threw her outside naked, refusing to give her her clothes. Norma said, “The poor kid was in a predicament, but, worse, she could have been killed. No matter what, you’re always at the mercy of the trick.”

On Conti Street, Norma always had a large, strong man on the premises during working hours. If the house got hot, though, and the girls were forced to conduct business in hotels and motels, they were completely vulnerable. In the late fifties, when Norma seemed as invincible as some of the politicians who had charge accounts at her house, one of the most gruesome acts of her career took place.

Norma had been warned by a police contact that a warrant to search 1026 Conti had been issued for the following Saturday night. As usual, that evening Jackie fielded the calls and dispatched girls to various hotels. One man was unknown to her, but he had impeccable credentials, a good reference, the right password, and all the right answers to her questions. She sent a girl to meet him at one of the Airline Highway motels.

When the girl got there, the man brutalized her over several hours. He bit off both her nipples and her clitoris. When he was finished he hung her from a coat hook on the back of the door. The hook pulled away from the door, and the girl survived. But the man seemed to have materialized from that dark place that was more frightening than any threat from the law or any act by a masochistic deviate, and he disappeared into the dark again, never to be found.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Trick of the Trade

The younger sister of one of the girls asked for a job at Norma’s. She was a very pretty girl, younger looking than her seventeen years, small boned and delicate, her face a sweet and perfect oval.

On the girl’s first night of work, just before four in the morning, a car slid up in front of 1026 Conti and parked. When the girl finished with her last trick shortly after four, she ran quickly to the car, got into the backseat, and the car drove off. The next evening the car arrived again, same time, parking so that part of Norma’s driveway was blocked. Norma watched from the window as her new girl ran out and opened the rear passenger door. A man and a woman sat in front. It dawned on Norma that the girl’s parents were picking her up after work every morning.

Norma figured that the parents didn’t want their daughter running in the Quarter, getting mixed up with dope fiends, and she was sympathetic for a while. But after a few weeks she began to get irritated. “It looked like hell,” she said. “My parents knew what business I was in, but even when I was hustling, they didn’t come pick me up.” She finally buttonholed the mother one night and asked her what the deal was.

“Well,” the woman said apologetically, “our daughter has always lived a very sheltered life.”

But that was one of the more unusual stories about how girls got into prostitution. More often they had been turned out by their parents or they were runaways who had fallen on hard times.

In 1957 a girl named Rose Mary, barely eighteen years of age, came to Norma’s house. She was a tall, slim, striking brunette. Her mother, a devout Catholic, had not allowed her daughter to date, so Rose Mary had fallen for the first sweet-talking rogue to come on to her, though she refused to sleep with him unless they were married.

On her wedding night, still a virgin, Rose Mary called her mother to ask her what to do. Her mother replied, “You made your bed, lie in it.” A month later Rose Mary’s husband told her she could make a lot of money modeling. He sent her to Norma’s house with another woman, because it was well known that the one thing Norma truly hated was a pimp. When Rose Mary found out what was really expected of her, she called her mother to ask if she could come home, but her mother refused to speak to her.

Shortly after that Norma heard from a character she knew, John Miorana, a good-looking man, wild, unpredictable, charismatic, and a natural-born criminal. He called Norma from jail after learning from his outside contacts that Rose Mary, his younger sister, was working at her house. He told Norma that Rose Mary had married a bad actor and a pimp, and he asked Norma to take care of her.

It wasn’t easy to get to know Norma. She held herself back, as if she was wary of newcomers, which she was—she hadn’t been in the business for almost forty years by being anything other than extremely cautious. Instead she drew Rose Mary out, getting her to talk about her parents and her home life, her marriage, her hopes and dreams. She found out that Rose Mary was a nurturer and had a strong maternal instinct. There would be time for all that, but first the young woman had to learn how to make a living. Norma began teaching her the tricks of the trade.

The first order of business was to inspect each date carefully, get him over to the sink and wash him with soap and water. And of course, while you were doing this, you were putting him at ease, especially if he was younger, letting the date know he wasn’t going to end up with a syphilitic brain from frequenting Conti Street.

The second step required a little more finesse. Norma and Rose Mary were in the kitchen as Norma was explaining how to check for disease. One of the porters walked in.

“Come over here,” Norma said. Quicker than he could protest, Norma unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis; grasping the head, she used a rapid, rather clinical movement to milk it. “One drop is all you need,” she said and held up her index finger. She told the porter he could go. He scuttled out of the kitchen, zipping up as he went.

“Feel that,” Norma said to Rose Mary. “Rub it between your fingers.” Rose Mary, her nose wrinkled in distaste, complied. “How does it feel?” Norma asked. Rose Mary shrugged. “Is it smooth?” She said it was. “Then he’s all right. If it’s even a little gritty, like it has sand in it, something’s wrong with him. If it’s real gritty, drop him like a hot potato and get away from him as fast as you can.”

Not long after that a date came to the house and picked Rose Mary from the girls in the parlor. Upstairs she took him to the bathroom sink and began the ritual washing, all charm and reassurance—as though it was his first time, not hers. The man told her he was a doctor. Rose Mary expressed the proper awe. She looked down. She thought she saw something jump into the sink. She looked more closely. Several things were jumping; not only that, they were crawling all over him; his pubic hair was infested.

“Norma!” Rose Mary called loudly. She smiled sweetly at the man. “I’ve never seen those before,” she said.

“Neither have I before I came here,” the doctor said hotly.

Rose Mary was about to go out to the balcony to call Norma again when the bedroom door opened. “What is it?” Norma said, irritated.

Rose Mary pointed. Norma peered at the doctor. “How dare you come in here like this,” she snapped. To Rose Mary she said, “Get away from him.”

“What do you mean?” the doctor said. “I didn’t have those when I walked in here.” He gestured toward Rose Mary.

“Like hell you didn’t! And don’t you dare say this girl gave you that. I know a case of crabs when I see one, and you’ve had that case for quite a while.”

“He’s a doctor, Norma,” Rose Mary said.

“A doctor! You put your clothes on right now! You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a sorry son of a bitch for a doctor. Don’t you ever come to this house in that condition. Go home and give it to your wife, anybody, but don’t bring it here!” Norma continued her ranting until she drove the doctor straight out of the house. She rushed back, issuing orders like a drill sergeant: Remove those sheets, take a bath, wash your hair, wash your clothes, no more work until Dr. Gomila checks you. When Rose Mary asked her to slow down, Norma nearly bit her head off: “What’s the matter—are you deaf?” Norma expected everyone’s brain to work as fast as hers did. She continued her rapid fire as she sprayed the room down.

Next Norma told Rose Mary to get some pointers from Terry. Terry showed her some new tricks, giving her a few of the techniques responsible for her first nickname, Yum-Yum. She explained it in musical terms. “Imagine that you’re playing a flute,” Terry said. “You’ve got to close certain holes to get one sound and stretch your lips to get another.” Rose Mary looked skeptical. Terry said, “They don’t call it a blow job for nothin, honey. Look, just think to yourself, Ummmm, delicious, yum-yum.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Rose Mary said.

“Sure you can. A lot of the girls prefer it. It’s easy and it’s not as messy. A lot quicker too.”

The first time a customer asked Rose Mary for this, she tried to remember everything Terry had told her, from the deep sucking pull to the whirling dervish tongue, but in her enthusiasm she went too deep, gagged, and threw up on the man.

She told Norma she didn’t think she ever wanted to do that again; Norma told her she’d get over it.

One evening Rose Mary went upstairs with a husky man who wore wire-rim glasses. When he disrobed she saw that he had the largest prick she’d ever seen. She called for Norma.

Norma opened the door to the room. “What is it now?” Rose Mary pointed to the man’s penis. Norma called out over the balcony, “Jackie, who’s the man in this room with the big dick?”

They dubbed him the Womb Scraper, and Norma told him that he could not enter any of the girls—that was the rule if he wanted to keep coming to the house.

One of Norma’s strictest rules was the one insisting that there be no locked doors while a girl was in a room with a date. Rose Mary went upstairs with the Womb Scraper the second time he came to the house, and as she walked toward the bathroom, he tried to turn the lock, which was old and used so infrequently that it didn’t yield immediately. When Rose Mary saw what he was doing, she rushed back toward the door, yelling, “Norma! Norma! He’s trying to lock the door!”

Footsteps pounded on the stairs, then Norma rushed into the room. She lunged for the Womb Scraper like a she-lion, scratching his face and screaming at him. George the porter had to get her off him. This time Norma banned the man from the house for good. A few weeks later they heard that he’d been arrested on Canal Street for masturbating in front of some children.

Not only did Norma have rules but she had rituals. Every night just before seven o’clock, for example, when the house opened for the evening, she asked one of the girls to give her a pubic hair or two. She’d wet her finger and stretch the hair over the keyhole of the parlor door, where it would stick with the moisture. Then she’d put a lighted match to the hair. And the men would start arriving.

She’d been asking Rose Mary for pubic hair for a couple of weeks running. Once again she called Rose Mary over to the door and asked her for a couple of hairs. Rose Mary sighed and started to hitch up her dress, then changed her mind. “Get somebody else to donate them tonight,” she said. “I’m going bald down there.” She walked off, through the parlor, toward the courtyard.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then Norma rushed past Rose Mary, her heels striking the courtyard tiles hard enough to create sparks. At the top of her lungs she demanded, “Did you hear that? She’s going bald! Jackie, get her pay!” She turned just enough to yell back at Rose Mary, “That’s it—you’re fired!” Jackie rolled her eyes and gave Rose Mary a hundred dollars.

Rose Mary went upstairs, changed clothes, and left the house. She called Norma the next evening. “I’ll be there in an hour,” she said.

“Oh?” Norma inquired archly. “Are you finished partying?”

Rose Mary hung up the phone. No pity; she’d never get any pity from Norma. But she was developing backbone.

Rose Mary started telling Norma what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t, and she was fired regularly, nearly once a week. She always came back, but then the men started complaining. One said, “Your girl won’t go down.”

Rose Mary said to Norma, “I told you I wouldn’t do that anymore.” She got fired.

Or Rose Mary would come flying down the stairs, tying her kimono around her. “He wants me to get on my hands and knees—like a dog! He wants to come in the back door. I won’t do it. Not now, not ever!” And Norma would fire her again.

One week Dr. Gomila came for the girls’ regular checkup. “I need sedatives,” Rose Mary told him. “She’s impossible.” Dr. Gomila agreed and gave her a prescription.

One night Rose Mary told Norma that she wouldn’t go with a certain man anymore because he always wanted her to go to the bathroom with him. “I’m telling you, Norma,” Rose Mary warned, “I’ll throw up.”

Norma was exasperated. “Rose Mary,” she said, “I am at my wit’s end with you. I spend half my time listening to what you won’t do and the other half running up those stairs after your ass. You are the world’s worst hooker!” She told Rose Mary to start answering the door and assisting Jackie, who had also stopped hooking early in her career.

Rose Mary cried with relief. Norma was the biggest bitch she’d ever known; she loved her dearly.