The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (22 page)

The night was wearing thin and, as the search went on, so were Norma’s nerves. The incessant tapping on the walls was like Chinese water torture; it sounded eerie coming from upstairs, like the beating of that dead man’s heart in the Edgar Allan Poe story. Norma was worried about the people trapped in the hideout. It must be sweltering in there, with the water heaters in the very back. She was afraid that the boys would start hollering any time. She needed to get Soulé and his cops out soon. She argued with him; she claimed harassment; she finally told him she was so tired she thought she was going to drop dead if he didn’t leave, and that gave her an idea. In the top drawer of the desk was an EKG she’d had made the week before. She was convinced that Soulé wasn’t as smart as he thought he was—he’d have found the hideout by now if he had any brains at all. She pulled out the EKG and showed it to him.

“Can you read this?” she asked. He gave no sign that he had a clue. “If you can’t, you’d better learn quick, because if I drop dead right now, you’re in plenty of trouble.”

He perused the graph of her heartbeats. She went on. “You can raid me and put me in jail, whatever, but let’s get this over with. There’s nobody here but me and my dog, and I’ve had it. I’m ready to call the newspapers and tell them to come down here and see what harassment is all about. You’ve been here almost five hours now!”

Soulé stared at the EKG, smoothing his mustache, not saying a word. Norma remembered something else in her desk, an agreement to renew her real estate contract for another three months with Frosty Blackshear.

She put it in front of Soulé, over the EKG. “Mrs. Blackshear just dropped this off today,” she said. “I told her that I’m very anxious to sell, that I’m being harassed by the police, and I know I’ll never have a minute’s peace. Does that look like I want to stay here and conduct a business?”

“Doesn’t
look
like it,” he said and laughed. He asked Norma a few personal questions, like where her husband was and if he had anything to do with running the operation. When he sat on the edge of
the desk and started counting up the months he and Norma had known each other, she thought she’d blow.

“That’s it,” she said, “I’m going to call the carpenter.”

“Go ahead,” Soulé told her, “but I want to be here.”

Daylight was creeping over the Quarter rooftops, and Norma felt frantic about the seven people still in the hideout. But she said slowly and calmly, “Sure, honey, it’s all right with me if you want to stay. We can board up the place together.” With her eyebrows coyly arched, Norma looked at Soulé until he looked away, then she called her carpenter and got him out of bed.

Paul Nazar was back on the third floor. Normally long on stamina and good humor, he was now feeling frustrated. His knuckles had started bleeding from tapping the walls. He stood in the middle of Terry’s room and took a few deep breaths. They’d heard the people, Soulé had seen one of them—they
had
to be here. Where?
Think,
he told himself furiously.

Rose Mary had no idea what time it was, but she thought if she had to stay in this pitch black armpit one more minute she was going to start screaming. “Leon,” she said, “isn’t there a flashlight in here?”

“I don’t know. I ain’t never been in here before.”

“I think there is, up on one of the shelves, toward the back.” She didn’t want to get up because Maggie was sitting calmly in her lap, possibly sleeping. Beside her, Leon uncurled himself and stood. He stretched. As he started moving toward the back of the hideout, he bent over and put his hand on Rose Mary’s head for balance, trying not to step on anyone, especially that mean little dog. He got past Rose Mary and started to stand upright, but his shoulder hit the bottom shelf. Something fell off it. Sandy let out a sharp cry of pain, which she immediately muffled. The noxious, suffocating odor of paint spread through the hideout.

“What the shit, Leon!” Rose Mary said.

“Christ!” Leon moaned. “My shoulder.”

Sandy started to weep. The three Hispanics began talking to each other in rapid, under-the-breath Spanish. Maggie barked, and everybody fell silent. Over the paint fumes came the smell of fear.

But by that time Charley the carpenter was there, nailing up the doorways. Once Soulé saw him lay out his tools, he said to Norma, “Okay, we’re leaving.”

Norma watched him and his little bastards walk out into the alley and get in their car. “Can you believe this idiot?” Norma said to Charley. “He must think I’m as stupid as he is.” She went to the bottom of the stairs. “You can come on down, Nazar, and whoever else is up there,” she called.

Soulé had left two goons besides Nazar—one last effort to catch her. Nazar, though, didn’t realize he’d been left. The other two came down grinning. Nazar had recovered his goodwill toward man—and woman. He swaggered up to Norma.

“Don’t come sweet-talkin me now, Nazar,” she said.

“Aw, come on, Norma. It’s just my job.”

“I know that, honey, and I still love you, but hit the road, will you?” She watched them go out the back parlor door. “Better luck next time,” she called out and threw the door closed behind them. It was six o’clock in the morning.

Rose Mary and the gang in the hideout could hear the pounding of a hammer. Were the police gone? Why wasn’t Norma coming to get them out? Rose Mary wanted to kick at the door, bellow, tear out her paint-covered hair. But she decided it was her job to keep the others calm.

Norma knew she couldn’t afford to make a mistake now. She called down to Pete’s and asked Poke Chop, the emcee, to get in his car in about half an hour and case the neighborhood. It was the longest hour in eternity for the people in the hideout, but Poke Chop reported back that the coast was clear.

The sun was up when Norma opened the hideout door. Sandy was covered in Cherries Jubilee, the red paint Norma had used in one of the parlors. It was in Rose Mary’s hair and speckled across Leon, Barbara, the black book, and the Latin boys. Maggie looked as if her toenails had been dipped.

Norma tried not to laugh. She busied herself getting the boys’ money. “Boys,” she said, “I can’t thank you enough, you know,
muchas gracias
, and all that. We’re all nailed in now. If you want to go upstairs"—
she pointed up the stairs and at the girls—“it’s on the house.
No dinero.
”

Sandy started crying again. Rose Mary let out a string of curses that would have set the parrots off if their cages hadn’t been covered. But the boys were ready to leave.

“You left us in there all night,” Rose Mary said as soon as they’d gone. “You forgot us in there!”

“You want to come out and get us all arrested, fine,” Norma said.

“Admit it, you forgot us. You think you had it bad in jail? You had
luxury
in jail compared to what we just went through!” Norma started to speak. “Stop, don’t even say it,” Rose Mary said, waving her off. “I’m firing myself,” and she flounced off, up to the third floor.

“Garrison wants to padlock the building,” Pershing Gervais told Norma.

“Rose Mary!” Norma yelled. “Have you been bringing Garrison his envelope?” Rose Mary yelled something unintelligible from another part of the house. “What have I been paying for, Pershing? Every week, like clockwork, Rose Mary puts the goddamn envelope in his hand. Talk to him—tell him the building’s up for sale. What the hell am I paying
you
for?”

Gervais laughed. “You know me, Norma. I ain’t never done nothin for nobody for nothin.” His big shoulders rolled forward in a shrug. “Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to him. It’s prob’ly worth it. You think it’s worth it?”

Norma went to get her purse.

Norma offered the house to Mr. Holzer, who owned the sheet-metal works next door. He acted as if fifty thousand was far too much. Frosty Blackshear kept bringing people in, many of whom knew what a hot spot the place was. It was a landmark; it would be a prank to have it. But those people never made an offer to buy it. On the street one day Norma ran into Pete Ricca, who had a demolition business and owned several pieces of property on Rampart Street. She asked him if he’d like to buy it. He offered her forty-five thousand, and Norma walked away.

She never turned another trick at 1026 Conti Street.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Discreet Mrs. Patterson

Norma hadn’t had an orgasm in five or six years until she was with Wayne a few times. Then she only had to look at him—that muscular, bronze body, his wavy black hair, his deep brown eyes—and she was ready. And Wayne had been with a number of women in his nearly twenty-three years, but none of them had the know-how of this woman, the one he still thought was Mrs. Patterson. He didn’t think of her as being older; he thought of her as being experienced. She knew how to touch, how to moan and groan, how to make a man feel as if he was the greatest son-of-a-bitchin lover in the world. She knew all the moves. With the younger girls, he had to make the moves, do all the work. With this woman, he sat there like a king. There was no comparison.

She moved a big, red-velvet, curved couch into her bedroom, and some days Wayne would just lie around on it, and she would stroke him, kiss him, make love to him any which way anyone could mention, name, think about, or imagine. It was nothing for him to have two or three orgasms a day. Sometimes all she had to do was touch him. He was impressed, and then some. The sex he’d been having with those other girls? The only way he knew to express it—it had been like riding a bicycle, then jumping into a Lincoln Continental.

•
•
•

Wayne drove a pink Nash Rambler. Every evening when he got off work at the shipyards, he drove the Rambler to Mrs. Patterson’s. Then they’d go out to dinner and hit a few clubs.

One weekend night they were at Scorpio’s, dancing a slow dance. Mrs. Patterson liked the slow dances; she had to be at least on the way to being drunk to do anything like the jitterbug. As they were coming off the floor, the band struck up a fast number, and a girl Wayne knew grabbed him, pulling him to the middle of the floor, where she jumped and jittered and he slid her through his legs and rolled her across his back, for which they got a loud ovation. After a few drinks Wayne got very friendly, so, as the crowd hooted and clapped, he put his arm around the girl, gave her a squeeze and, into the act, a quick kiss on the lips before he eased off the dance floor and sat at the table with Mrs. Patterson.

“That dog won’t hunt, Wayne,” she said.

Wayne, taking a long pull at his drink, put his glass down and said, “What does that mean?”

Mrs. Patterson leaned toward him and put her chin in her palm. “Did I ever tell you how I like to play baseball?” she asked. Wayne shook his head. “Well, I like to play ball, but when I play, I’m the pitcher, the catcher, the batter, the first base, the second base . . .”

Wayne began to laugh. “Okay, I got you, but where the hell do I come in?”

“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Patterson told him, “you’ve got the balls.”

This was true, which gave Wayne a certain amount of power with Mrs. Patterson, though he never seemed to be exercising it. Wayne would simply get caught up in whatever he was doing and let the rules of baseball slide every now and then. This would cause little ruckuses, as Wayne called them, like the night Mrs. Patterson got angry with him and chased him around the Cadillac in the parking lot at Scorpio’s. She had taken her high heels off, and in her stockings she ran across the shells that covered the lot. The next morning the bottoms of her feet were cut and knotted. “It’s amazing what a little Bacardi and Coke will make you do,” she told Wayne as he rubbed her feet and doctored her bruises.

In those days even the fights were romantic. They made up, walked hand in hand on the levee, and rolled down its grassy slope as if they were young lovers; they made love in the backseat of the pink Rambler—the pink vagina, Mrs. Patterson called it—as if they were teenagers again. Wayne was at Mrs. Patterson’s every day, and he usually spent the night so they could play a little ball. One night she said, “Why don’t you just bring your clothes over and move in?” Wayne was having the time of his life, so the next day he moved in with Mrs. Patterson and her nieces, which is how Wayne had heard her introduce the girls to her neighbors. The woman who ran the neighborhood grocery store had said, rather sarcastically, “Gee, what a big family you have,” and “My goodness, so many nieces—no nephews?”

There were strange goings-on, with four or five girls in the big house some nights and more over in the little house. But live and let live was the way Wayne thought. He didn’t wander far from Mrs. Patterson’s bedroom. She’d get up now and again, confer with the nieces, but she wasn’t explaining anything, so he didn’t ask any questions, and before he knew it she’d be back, setting a mood with some music and a few candles, and then his mind would be somewhere else altogether.

One night, though, Wayne went down the hall to the bathroom. He passed a room with curtained French doors. One door was slightly ajar. He heard a low moan and looked in. Illuminated by a single candle, a man and one of the nieces were going at it. Wayne tiptoed to the bathroom, and when he returned to Mrs. Patterson’s room, he closed the door and said to her, “Okay, what exactly is going on around here?”

Mrs. Patterson put her finger to her lips and motioned for Wayne to go with her to a small screened porch off her bedroom. They sat in the dark and listened for a moment to the country sounds, frogs croaking, cicadas scratching, until Mrs. Patterson’s near whisper came to him on the balmy breeze. “I’m not Mrs. Patterson,” she said.

“Okay,” Wayne said laughing, “I’ll bite: Who are you?”

“I’m Norma Wallace.”

Wayne’s hands hung over the arms of the rocking chair he sat in. He lifted them, holding them open for a second, fingers splayed, and let them fall. “Whatever you say.” He laughed again.

Norma took one of his hands. “Wayne, do you remember, a long time ago, Bubba took you to a house in the French Quarter?” Wayne’s eyes were wide open, the whites nearly glowing in the dark. “A lot of pretty girls?”

“I remember.”

“I ran that house.” She paused, to let it sink in. “Now I’m running it here.”

“Son of a gun,” Wayne said calmly. And that was the beginning of a little bit of excitement, as Wayne liked to say in his understated way.

Norma kept the fact that she was running a whorehouse from the people in Waggaman as long as she could, but a few things happened that blew the lid right off the action. First the washing machine broke down. This was a critical piece of machinery in the operation, because Norma was not about to use a commercial laundry and risk the IRS counting her towels as they had Marie Bernard’s. To expedite matters, Norma called Sears and charged a new washing machine to Wayne’s mother’s account. When Helen Bernard saw the bill, she hit the roof. Wayne tried to explain, giving her cash to pay it, but Helen demanded to know what Wayne was doing at Mrs. Patterson’s. So Norma had a long visit with Helen one afternoon, after which everything calmed down. Then, when Wayne went to his parents’ house, Helen would ask, “How is Mrs. Patterson?”

Finally one day Wayne said, “She’s not Mrs. Patterson, Mother.”

“That’s all right,” Helen said. “I just love Mrs. Patterson.”

“Mother, she’s Norma Wallace.”

“Well then,” Helen responded cheerfully, “I just love Norma Wallace.” Wayne realized that if she even knew who Norma Wallace was, by that time she didn’t care.

Once Wayne’s family knew that he was living with Norma, the situation became a little looser. Wayne stopped hiding the Rambler in the back and began driving Norma’s Cadillac around. But he made the mistake of driving it to work. All the men in the yard stopped working and watched as Wayne got out of the car. Then they started riding him. He told them, “I just borrowed the lady’s car.” They said, “You borrowed your ass!” They’d seen his pink car at Mrs. Patterson’s
house. They’d seen those nieces too. They got wise to the nieces, and the next thing, they wanted Wayne to make a connection for them. They bought him beers; it wouldn’t cost them nothin, would it? At Norma’s suggestion Wayne retired from the shipyards.

Not long after that a girl named Betty called the house and said she was Wayne’s friend. She told Jackie she wanted to go to work for Norma Wallace. “That slut,” Norma said and suggested that the girl was looking for trouble.

Trouble, though, was much closer to home. Wayne was feeding the horses in the stable behind the big house one afternoon when one of the girls, Cindy, a cute blonde, joined him. She didn’t waste much time, only giving the time of day before she ran her hand up Wayne’s thigh and said, “Norma’s not home. Wanna get together?”

Wayne had no time to react, which he later considered lucky. He heard a noise at the other end of the barn, where the washing machines were. Marie, the maid, stood there looking at them. Wayne didn’t know what to make of Marie. She was a pretty, light-skinned black woman with reddish hair who was very quiet. Norma had told him that men offered large sums of money to sleep with Marie but she always refused. Marie was mysterious, somewhat intimidating because of her silence. Apparently Cindy thought so too. “Maybe later,” she said to Wayne and hurried back to the house. She never approached him again.

But even bigger trouble was on the horizon. Word had spread about Norma’s presence in Jefferson Parish, and it had reached Sheriff Alwynn Cronvich. Bubba Rolling, who was Cronvich’s chief of detectives at the time, gave Norma as much protection as he could. But one evening, just as a date’s car parked at the top of the horseshoe drive, Norma spotted the men on the levee across River Road. The date was ringing the bell as Norma rounded up the girls and told Wayne to take them across the field and hide them.

“Where?” Wayne asked.

“I don’t care,” Norma answered, “Just go
now
!”

So off they went, streaking across the field, then through the woods toward the railroad tracks. The girls weren’t exactly dressed for hiking. As they went he heard a series of staccato female tones. “Shit!” “Oh, hell!” “Damn!”

“Keep it down,” Wayne told them. It only got worse.

The woods were so thick in the back that when Wayne reached the tracks, he thought it would be prudent to walk them, unless a train happened to come along.

“Please don’t let a train come through here now,” he repeated over and over. He turned in the direction of his parents’ house and told the girls to hurry. He headed for their barn. When they got there Wayne saw that the girls were bleeding from the thorns and barbed wire. Some had shredded stockings hanging around their ankles and blood running down their legs. One girl was in shorts, and her legs looked as if Bubba’s fighting cocks had been working out on them. Another girl was missing a shoe and trying to pick the burrs out of her foot.

They looked at each other, huddled in the barn, and they began to laugh. Wayne’s father, joined by Snapbean, came out to see what was going on. He looked at them, scanned the girls’ legs, and left without a word, never said a word to Wayne about it either. He just thought the world of Mrs. Patterson or Norma Wallace or whatever she wanted to call herself.

“Where’s Mrs. Patterson?” Snapbean wanted to know. He’d called her that for so long that he was having trouble remembering her name was Norma. He loved her too. Wayne’s father came back and had to drag Snapbean off with him. For a minute Snapbean thought it was his lucky day.

After that first brush with Alwynn Cronvich’s deputies, in early fall of 1963, Norma shut things down for a while and decided that she and Wayne should take a trip to Mexico.

When Norma’s hairdressers, Francis Davis and Janice Roussel, first heard that Norma had been seen running around with someone in blue jeans, they were astounded. “Not Norma!” they said. McCoy had always been so well dressed, nothing but the best—raw-silk suits, custom-made shirts, Italian loafers of snakeskin and alligator.

“Oh no,” Norma told them, “I spent my money dressing the others, but I’m not dressing this baby.”

She may have meant what she said, but her good intentions fell by the wayside early on—the first outfit she bought Wayne was a red
jumpsuit made out of a stretchy material that fit him like a second skin. But Wayne wasn’t a jumpsuit sort of guy. He put it on, took it off immediately, and was back in his blue jeans.

The trip to Mexico called for another shopping excursion. Norma bought Wayne several suits and herself a wardrobe of dresses, nothing casual—they were going to be dressed to kill the entire trip. One of the dresses was sequined, a long, tight tube of a dress that looked as if it were made of thousands of tiny opals and must have weighed ten pounds. Wayne thought Norma looked quite sharp in that dress.

Their first stop was Mexico City. Norma wore her sequined gown, Wayne a classy continental-cut suit, and they went to dinner at the restaurant of the hotel where they were staying. They were shown to a table near the mariachi band. Norma, as usual, sat so she was facing out, with a view of the room. Wayne faced her; the only view he had was the scenery outside the windows. She had on dark glasses, which she wore all the time now, day and night.

Wayne studied the menu, looking for the biggest steak on it. He looked up to see Norma with a seductive smile on her face, her head tilted, flirting—not with him but with someone behind him. He looked over his shoulder. The castanet player winked at Norma.

“What the hell is going on?” Wayne asked her. Norma’s face broke into a big smile. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said, but she wasn’t. She’d wanted to see how he would react, and she liked his reaction. Wayne went back to reading the menu.

After Mexico City they went to Acapulco, where they stayed at the Hilton Hotel, famous for its cliff divers. Their first night they dressed up again, Norma ultraglamorous in her opalescent gown and dark glasses, Wayne sharp in an Italian suit, and went out to have drinks by the pool. It was getting late and people started going in for dinner, but Norma and Wayne stayed to watch the stars come out. Hand in hand they walked to where they had a view of the cliffs in the moonlight. As they were coming around the pool, Wayne stepped in front of Norma, dropping her hand. He heard a splash behind him. Norma had walked right into the deep end of the pool!