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Authors: Chris Wiltz

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #Nonfiction, #Retail

The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (17 page)

BOOK: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A Different Kind of Trick

Through the fifties Norma’s Conti Street neighborhood saw more change. The Greyhound bus station had been moved out of the French Quarter, and Mike Persia’s car dealership opened next door to Norma’s house.

Also, there were fewer landladies than ever in the Quarter. Dora Russo had left for a less visible location, 2130 Bayou Road, where she ran a comfortable but not first-rate house known for quick business and gin rummy games. Mayor Chep Morrison, who didn’t want to run into his Uptown neighbors at Norma’s, dropped in at Dora’s now and again until he began his affair with Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1959. Shortly after that Gertie Yost’s high-rent establishment at 935 Esplanade became a day nursery and kindergarten. Marie Bernard, jailed for tax evasion, left two addresses where she operated, 509 St. Louis and 505 Decatur Street. After many years Uptown at 1618 Melpomene Street, Bertha Anderson had returned to the Quarter, to 818 Royal Street, but she had died. Juliet Washington had given up her house two doors down from Norma’s, and Melba Moore’s Cadillacs brimming with prostitutes had long since disappeared from the streets of the Quarter. Camilla Turner killed herself by wrecking her car on the Chef Menteur Highway, returning from the Gulf Coast, where she’d found her lover with another woman.

But Pete Herman was still running his nightclub a block away and, with a few of his own girls and a few of Norma’s, the brothel above it, which the locals referred to as Pete Herman’s Chippie Inn.

Rose Mary laid out brown envelopes on the desk in the sunroom and stuffed them with payoffs. Some she left at the house, where the beat cops picked them up via the slot in the second parlor; others she brought to the precincts where Norma’s contacts were assigned; still others went to the police department’s Broad Street building. When Big Mo got his envelope, he usually responded by sending Norma violets. She liked the gesture but not the flowers—they reminded her of flowers old ladies would get. She gave them to her mother.

The money in Pete Herman’s envelope wasn’t a payoff but his cut of some business he and Norma had shared. Pete had some good regular customers, though, that he didn’t like to share, just as Norma didn’t share all of hers.

On one occasion Norma nabbed one of Pete’s hundred-dollar men, took his money, then told him to go back to Pete’s, where her girl would meet him and take him to a hotel. She told Rose Mary she didn’t know the man well enough to have him at the house. The following evening she sent Rose Mary to the lounge with Pete’s 30 percent cut. Sometimes Rose Mary would just give the envelope to Poke Chop or Coffee Pot (because of the big bump on his forehead) or Chilie Beans, Pete’s emcees at the club, and that would be the end of it. More often, like this night, Pete answered the door himself.

Rose Mary handed him the envelope. “What’s the matter with her?” he asked, and Rose Mary knew she’d be there at least an hour. He opened the envelope, fingered the money—he claimed he could tell the denomination by feeling it—and said, “She took my customer, she took my money, and I’m still talking to her? She wants to send me my own tricks and charge me?” Rose Mary let him blow off steam, knowing full well that Pete still loved Norma, that if anyone said a thing against her, there’d be hell to pay.

Mac still loved Norma too, though more and more she seemed to be pushing him away. The girls had heard her curse him out, then they had watched him leave, his golf bag slung over his shoulder, and
they couldn’t understand why she was so angry with him. He was so nice and he loved her so much—and he was
so
good looking. They all would have tumbled had he only asked, but Mac never hit on any of them. The girls knew that when Norma was angry with Mac, they’d better get out of her way.

Marcia, a raven-haired beauty who had a dramatic widow’s peak, arrived at the house one evening just as Norma slammed the door behind Mac. She went upstairs to get dressed for work and came down the courtyard stairway. Norma saw her and went into a rage. “Don’t you know how much I hate widow’s peaks?” she yelled. “Go upstairs this instant and get rid of it!”

Marcia protested, “But, Norma, it’s my
hair
!”
Norma told her to shave it off or she’d be fired. Marcia cried and begged, but to no avail. Finally, she went upstairs and shaved off her widow’s peak.

That Christmas Norma was so angry with everyone in the house that she held back the bonuses, and instead of the large bottles of Joy perfume that were always part of their Christmas presents, she gave them small bottles. Only the animals escaped Norma’s fury, and they were like a bunch of spoiled brats. Norma doted on them, feeding them shrimp and choice liver, then getting Rose Mary to call the vet at two in the morning if a cat threw up or had the runs. The parrots were out of control. “Screw the bastard!” they shrieked as the girls led their dates up the stairs.

Poodles were all the rage in the late fifties, and Norma had several. She called one Carmen Miranda and dressed the white miniature in a skirt and Carmen Miranda-type bra, perching a fruit hat on its head. If a banana shook, Norma would accuse Rose Mary: “You fooled with her hat.” Rose Mary wanted to strangle Carmen Miranda. Then there was the monkey, a little spider that liked to sit on a wide piece of molding above the back door. Rose Mary came in one evening and the monkey let loose on her head. “Norma!” she screamed. Norma laughed as she hadn’t for weeks when she saw the mess. “Go ahead, laugh,” Rose Mary said. “You’re two of a kind—you’re both crazy!” It got to where Rose Mary dreaded the appearance of a new pet.

Norma began sneaking around with men. One night after she and Mac had argued until Norma ordered him to leave, Rose Mary found
her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, plucking hairs and getting ready for a night on the town.

“Oh, these little white hairs,” she said, tweezing one from her chin. She turned around. “Make sure they’re all gone, will you?” she asked, and as Rose Mary inspected her face, Norma added, “Even when I’m dead, or I’ll come back to haunt you.”

She got dressed in one of her hot little red numbers and put on her diamond earrings. Then she told Rose Mary to keep an eye on things in the parlor and made her escape through the front door, as if Rose Mary had no idea what was going on.

Mac had been spending most of his time in Waggaman, but, as he often did, that morning he came back sometime after four to try to make amends with Norma. The last trick had not been gone long when Rose Mary saw him park behind the house. As always he walked around to let himself in the front door. He wasn’t halfway down the driveway when Norma burst through the back door.

“Rose Mary, Rose Mary,” she yelled, “hurry up, hurry!” She tore off her red dress and threw it on the floor of the parlor. The diamond earrings landed behind the couch.

“You think I was born yesterday?” Rose Mary snapped. “Like I don’t know what’s going on? I know who you were out with.” Her brother John was recently out of jail.

Norma paid her no attention. “Mess up the hair, Rose Mary,” she said. “Hurry!”

If Norma was angry with Mac, she’d fire Rose Mary. Sometimes she’d fire her, then say, “Come on, let’s go get a drink.” They’d go over to Bourbon Street to Dan’s International or Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. When it came time to pay, Rose Mary would say, “I don’t have a dime.”

“You should have worked,” Norma would answer, paying the bill.

“I got fired, remember?”

Sometimes when Rose Mary got fired, she’d take a hundred dollars from Norma’s purse and go out alone. But the next day she always told Norma that she’d taken the money.

“Oh, so now you’re a common thief,” Norma would say, but she’d never take the money back.

During that time Norma’s mother moved to one of the rooms on the third floor of the house. Rose Mary was getting fired so much that she decided to move into another room. That way when Norma fired her she’d just go upstairs and talk to Amanda for the rest of the night.

But Amanda was not well. Her alcoholism had reached a point that she was sick most of the time, and she had Parkinson’s disease as well. Once, in the early morning hours, she started a fire. It was only luck that Mac had decided to hang around that night. He broke the door down and got to Amanda before she burned herself up. They didn’t know if the fire was accidental or not; Amanda had tried to kill herself several times with pills. She had a rage to match Norma’s, especially if she was drinking. She would throw bottles at Norma and scream at her. But Norma, so volatile herself, never raised her voice to her mother. She would try to soothe her and tell her everything would be all right.

But her mother, her marriage—everything seemed to be working on Norma. She would walk through the house, pulling at her hair until it was standing on end. Rose Mary would say, “Pleeeze, Norma, go brush that hair!” And if Norma thought about it, she’d tell Rose Mary she was fired.

By this time Rose Mary had been fired so much that she hardly even acknowledged it, unless she wanted to make a point. Norma had stopped going to Canal Street to shop. Instead, she had the stores send over racks of clothes that she tried on in the privacy of her apartment. One night after she’d just fired Rose Mary, she told her to pick a dress from the rack.

“I’ve just been fired,” Rose Mary said. “I get fired so much that I don’t have any money to buy clothes.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Norma told her, “pick out a dress. I’ll pay for it.” It was that night that Rose Mary found out Norma had been calling her mother, letting her know that Rose Mary was safe. She told Rose Mary to pick out a dress and go see her mother. The reconciliation made Rose Mary enormously happy, though she remained with Norma.




And so things continued as a new decade began. The year 1960 marked Norma’s fortieth year in the business. Norma put her mother in a nursing home and took Big Mo’s violets to the ladies there. She spent time in Waggaman, though she made no pretense that her marriage made her happy. She saw men, like John Miorana, but no one in particular after John Datri.

Norma was accustomed to having men offer a lot of money for the madam of the house, but she had never accepted those offers, no matter how tempting. Now, though, she came home more than once and held a sheaf of bills out in front of Rose Mary, on one occasion twenty hundred-dollar bills, which the man she’d been out with had offered her to spend the night with him. She took him to the Roosevelt Hotel, put the money in her purse, told him to go freshen up, and while he was in the bathroom, she left.

“What the hell, Rose Mary?” she said, handing her five hundred dollars. “He was stupid to give it to me, don’t you think?”

Not one man ever came back to protest. It seemed that Norma had come full circle, duping men out of money just as she’d duped Dr. Silvester so many years ago.

Norma peered at the man standing on the other side of the parlor door. She had to put her face up close to the bars over the sliding window to see him because he was so tall. He introduced himself as Jim Garrison, a local attorney. His voice was a deep bass; his eyes were intense; he stood six foot seven. When Norma opened the door, he had to duck to get inside.

Norma gave Garrison a drink and sat with him in the parlor. It was just after six o’clock, and the house wasn’t open for business yet; she told Garrison she’d see if any of her girls was available. But he didn’t want to go upstairs; he wanted to give her his card. He told her that he had been an assistant district attorney and now he was in private practice. He gave her an engaging smile. “It’s an advantage to know how to play both sides of the fence,” he said, adding that he’d appreciate any business she could send his way.

Norma had left the door to the courtyard open. The phones began ringing. She got up and closed the door. Garrison clearly knew
what business she was in, but Norma didn’t want him to hear Jackie on the phone. Even though he was charming, quite personable, Norma thought that he seemed strange and she didn’t trust him. He finished his drink and left, appearing to stalk rather than walk away. She put his card in her desk and, for the time being, didn’t give him another thought.

There were too many other things to think about. The 1960 elections resulted in a complete change of guard. Chep Morrison ran for governor of Louisiana instead of mayor of New Orleans and lost. Vic Schiro was elected mayor, Provosty Dayries resigned as police chief, Schiro named Joseph Giarrusso (a friend of both Big Mo Guillot and Foots Trosclair) as his successor—and a decade of police scandal came to an end.

Giarrusso was the right man for the job; he was not only a capable administrator but good at public relations. He knew how to address his officers and win heir loyalty; he knew how to speak to the people and reassure them.

Norma figured she’d better get on the good side of the new superintendent. Every evening around nine o’clock, Joe and his brother Clarence Giarrusso (who became head of narcotics) and a few of their cronies would stop in at Dan’s International, a Chinese restaurant and lounge at the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon, for a cup of coffee. Dan’s was one of Norma’s favorite Quarter hangouts. She took to arriving in time to have a drink and chat with the Giarrusso brothers. When she felt the timing was right, she arranged a meeting with Joe.

Giarrusso agreed to meet Norma at City Park late one evening. He drove to their specified meeting place near the Dueling Oaks, parked his car, and got into her Cadillac. He had no idea what she wanted to talk to him about, and he was thinking perhaps he’d been naïve to agree to see her, but his curiosity had won over any caution. Not only that, it was possible she had some information for him. He gunned his throat, but nothing cleared his husky, watery voice. “So what’s up, Norma?” he asked, cutting straight to the chase, his vowels gurgling.

Norma drove slowly through the empty, winding streets of the park, dark even with a harvest moon because of the dense canopy of oak trees. “What’s your hurry?” she wanted to know. She was a naturally flirtatious woman, a quality Giarrusso appreciated, but he
knew she was devious too. His instincts were going against any notion that she had asked for the meeting because she’d decided she wanted to have an affair with him.

BOOK: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld
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