The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (26 page)

In late November a letter arrived that gave Rose Mary some hope. Norma wrote, “I hope before long I can adjust and that Afro hair bastard will be not even a memory.”

Norma had been writing in a diary; now she wrote inside the front cover, “The joy of love is only for the moment, but the pain of love is forever.” She cut out inspirational columns about aging and pasted them in the diary. One, an Ann Landers column called “Advice to the Unsure,” read in part: “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

Norma tried God too, quoting Matthew’s Gospel: “Again, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, they love to say their prayers standing up in a synagogue and at the street corners for everyone to see them. I tell you this, they have their reward already. But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door and pray to your Father who is there in a secret place, and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you.”

Norma gave Rose Mary a diamond cross with a ruby at each end and wrote to her, “There is a place in heaven for you, but I worry about that as I know I won’t be able to get there.”

Now she wrote in her diary, “Virtue consists not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.”

She pasted a poem called “Saints and Sinners” in her book, and she pressed four-leaf clovers between its pages. But no advice or superstition, regret or prayer could calm the obsession that consumed Norma, body and soul.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Gun

In the early fall of 1974, Sidney Scallan stopped at a metha-done clinic in New Orleans to check the action. He was taking methadone himself, but he also had a couple of bags of heroin in his pocket. A young character approached him outside the clinic and asked Sidney if he would trade a bag of heroin for a .38 caliber pistol that belonged to his father. He had the pistol on him. Sidney looked at it, liked its heft, and the exchange was made.

About a month later Pershing Gervais called—he had some new results to play. He asked Sidney to meet him at a restaurant off Veterans Highway in Metairie. Gervais ordered a couple of steaks. As they ate he told Sidney that he had a friend who wanted someone eliminated, an out-of-state job, and was willing to pay five thousand dollars.

“That could be done,” Sidney said, “but it would cost ten, not five.”

“I’ll have to talk to my friend,” Gervais said.

“Fair enough,” Sidney replied.

Five days later Gervais called for another meeting, same place. “My friend will be with me,” he informed Sidney.

“No way,” Sidney said. “I don’t want to know who he is, and I don’t want him to know who I am.”

“I can deal with that,” Gervais said. They agreed on a time to meet.

At the restaurant Gervais told Sidney, “Five. That’s the offer.”

Sidney, his ice blue eyes flecked with black, gave Gervais a flinty look. “Can’t be done for five.”

Gervais returned Sidney’s stare. Sidney wasn’t going to budge on this. Gervais excused himself to call the friend. Five minutes later he eased into his chair across the table from Sidney. “Seven’s as high as he’ll go.”

Sidney smiled. “Only made yourself three on that one, huh, Pershing?”

Gervais ordered rib eyes and got down to business—a photo of the subject, the location, and four grand up front. Gervais started to say something about a bad gambling debt, but Sidney held up his hand. “I got what I need,” he said. The way Sidney felt, you played the game and you knew the odds, but he didn’t want to know about any particular game. The two men closed the deal with a cup of coffee and went their separate ways.

Sidney filed the serial number off the gun the young character had traded for heroin. Then he called a friend. He gave this friend part of the money, and the job was done. Afterward Sidney buried the pistol in the woods behind the New Orleans airport, not far from where he and Rose Mary lived. He had no intention of digging it up again.

Norma’s habit was to hide cash all over the house. Sometimes she put it in the pots and pans. If it wasn’t a lot, she put it in an early American–style lamp, in a little well on one end of the lamp’s arm that held metal rounds for balance. She took out some of the rounds and stuffed money down in the well. Another place was a huge vase in the hallway, underneath the bouquet of artificial flowers. She’d hid three thousand dollars in the vase, she thought, but now she couldn’t find it. She called Jean’s mother’s, looking for Wayne.

When he called her back, she demanded, “Did you take the money that was in the vase?”

“Lord no, Norma, I didn’t take your money,” Wayne told her.

“It’s gone. Unless I don’t remember where I put it.” Wayne told her he’d come help her look for it as soon as he got off work.

They tore up the house. Norma wondered if she wasn’t losing her mind. Pulling at her hair, she told Wayne how bad she felt—physically, mentally, every way. She told him if she didn’t start feeling better, she was just going to shoot herself.

The following weekend Rose Mary and Sidney arrived in a new car, secondhand but in good shape, a car that could easily have cost three thousand dollars. Sidney had told Rose Mary he bought it with the money he’d made from a little job on the side. She assumed he’d been selling drugs again.

When Wayne came to the house four or five days later, Norma said, “Well, I think I know where my three thousand dollars went. I don’t like that guy. He’s an ex-con and a thief. He hasn’t been out of Angola long. I’m afraid of him.”

She complained again about not feeling well. Wayne listened with half an ear, and Norma could tell. She said he’d be more sympathetic if he only knew how rough it was for her; she told him she’d been to the doctor and she had a blood clot in her leg. She really didn’t know how much longer she could go on. She told Wayne again that she wanted to kill herself.

Wayne didn’t believe her. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the guts—he didn’t believe Norma was the type of person to kill herself. She was strong, and suicide was for weaklings. Besides, Norma had always loved life too much. Nevertheless, he didn’t like the sound of it. He left the house and called Dutz Stouffert, who still worked for Norma, and told him next time he was there to be on the lookout for a gun.

Rose Mary and Sidney drove up the following Saturday, and Rose Mary immediately took little Sidney in to the bathroom. One of the parrots saw her and shrieked an obscenity. Rose Mary called, “Norma, you’ve got to get rid of those parrots!”

But Norma was outside, standing at the side of the car as Sidney peered under its hood. “Sidney,” she said, “do you think you could get me a gun?” Her question surprised him. Not more than a month before he’d seen a real pretty gun, a brand-new pistol, in a box under
her bed. But maybe that gun belonged to the young dude, her husband. Then Norma said, “I want one without a serial number.”

Sidney wondered if Norma wanted to off her husband, the way she cried and carried on about him to Rose Mary. He didn’t know Wayne, but the way he figured it, the dude was nothing but a stupid redneck, didn’t know how to handle a good thing. When Norma bought him a Corvette, he traded it in for a pickup truck. Dumb. The kind of guy who would get eaten up in the fast lane. In Sidney’s estimation Norma was one cool lady. It was nothing to him if she wanted to get rid of the guy. He’d even do it for her if she asked. For free. But she wasn’t asking; she just wanted a gun.

“Sure,” Sidney told her, “I can get one for you.”

Later that week Sidney went out to the woods behind the airport.

That Thursday, Wayne decided to check on Norma after work. Dutz Stouffert had told him he’d looked through the house and found no handgun. Wayne couldn’t have said why, but he didn’t think Norma would kill herself with one of his guns, the shotguns and rifles on the rack in the living room. She was probably just talking anyway.

They spent a quiet evening together, and for once Wayne was in no hurry to leave. At one point Norma told him she’d changed her will, leaving her money and her half of the house to her nephew Johnny Badon. “Do whatever you want with your money, Norma,” Wayne told her. His indifference was genuine and complete.

But he stayed with Norma that night. He fell asleep with his head in her lap. He woke up several times, surprised to find her wide awake, just looking at him. She smoothed his hair, stroked his forehead, and he went back to sleep. When he woke up in the morning, he told Norma he’d see her later and left.

The next day, Saturday, as he and Rose Mary got ready to go over to Bush, Sidney stuck the pistol down in the waistband of his pants. He knew Rose Mary wouldn’t think anything of it; he usually carried a gun, a nine-millimeter automatic. She wouldn’t notice that this was a different gun.

Little Sidney was fussy, running a low fever. Rose Mary decided to leave him with her mother. Sidney drove to his mother-in-law’s first, then over to Bush. Norma seemed particularly upset that little Sidney wasn’t with them that day.

As he walked in, Sidney laid the pistol on a small table to the right of the door. He caught Norma’s eye when Rose Mary wasn’t looking and nodded toward it. When he went into the kitchen, Norma slipped three hundred-dollar bills into the pocket of his shirt.

“The gun didn’t cost me nothin, Norma,” Sidney said.

“Go on,” she told him, “keep it.”

But Norma was in a mood that day—running around frantic, upset and crying about the young dude, pulling at her hair. Like a bitch in heat, Sidney thought. Hard into shooting heroin at the time, he told the women he was going over to Bogalusa to visit some friends. He was gone for a couple of hours.

After Sidney left Norma calmed down for a while. She used the phone a couple of times, then she and Rose Mary sat in the living room, Rose Mary in a chair, crocheting an afghan, Norma on the sofa, writing, taking care of some business.

“Where’s your purse, Rose?” Norma asked after a while. Rose told her, and Norma got up to get it. “I’m putting this jewelry and some money in it.” Rose Mary looked up to see her put her pearl brooch and some other pieces along with a wad of cash down in the purse. She wanted Rose Mary to put it all in her safe-deposit box on Monday. Rose Mary told her she would, and they fell silent again, Norma writing and Rose Mary hearing her tear a page from her tablet every so often.

Norma was writing several letters. One began, “Rose and Sidney, forgive me for giving you this trouble.” It went on to ask them to contact Wayne at the trailer park in Bogalusa, followed by Jean’s mother’s Franklinton phone number.

Another letter was to Elise Rolling, a short note saying that she had tried to call, she just wanted to say goodbye.

The longest letter was to Wayne:

Wayne, I am so sorry to bring all this trouble on you and these people but I just cant go on any longer, when you walked out
that door Friday morning and said in such a cold voice see you later Norma, I died you could have at least kissed me on my forehead, I know you were fooling with Jean for some time but had hoped you would come home, I was right the way it turned out, you left me lying here with 101 fever and a blood clot, I couldn’t do that to a dog, the ten years didn’t mean a thing. Stay here in this house and take care of Rusty for my sake and if you cant, put him to sleep, put all my cats and dogs to sleep, give Rose Tippy as she loves her—you wanted your freedom now you have it, all my friends have done everything for me but I just cant go on, alone so much and carrying in wood and I am sick, oh such a lone feeling only God knows, Rusty and I could have gone on if you had moved me back to N.O. you knew when I moved here you had met that girl, and all you wanted was to leave me, you are entitled to your own life and I hope it will be a happy one, you cant find a happy life in bar rooms—

Now, please stay here and take care of Rusty.

In our old hiding place is some money for Rusty’s food.

That day Norma had reconsidered her will and decided that she wanted Wayne instead of her nephew to have her half of the house, and that Rose Mary’s and Sidney’s signatures would witness this last wish. She also wrote to Wayne that she wanted to be cremated.

Business taken care of, Norma’s letter became thoughtful:

The last thing in my mind is I love you and your mothers last words, dont be mean to Norma, remember me as the one person that wanted only the best for you.

But you seemed happy this last months with trash, you were a wonderful husband to me for ten yrs. I am grateful for that, Something just came in my mind,

Mourn not for what you have lost but be thankful instead for what you have had

Norma

About the time that Norma finished her letters, Sidney returned from Bogalusa, still flying, but he knew he’d nod soon. He told Norma and Rose Mary that he thought he’d take a nap, but first Norma asked him and Rose Mary to witness something for her. She turned first one sheet, then another over, and he and Rose Mary signed their names twice. Then Sidney went off to the guest room.

Norma put the letters in envelopes, one marked “Rose,” another “Elise Rolling.” On a third envelope she wrote, “Wayne Bernard, Strictly personal.” She thought a minute, then wrote the address of the trailer park above Wayne’s name. She sealed the envelopes and, holding them up, said to Rose Mary, “Give these to Arthur de la Houssaye.” She put them with Rose Mary’s purse.

Rose Mary was used to signing things for Norma and taking papers to the lawyer’s. She thought nothing of it. For the moment, at least, Norma seemed calm, saying she was going to call Pershing Gervais, she had a few things to talk to him about. Rose Mary continued working on her afghan. She saw Norma pick up a small pillow from the sofa and walk over toward the door. Norma stood by the little table a moment, then she turned and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. After a minute or two, Rose Mary heard her on the phone, crying.

Norma had called Elise and Bubba Rolling’s number. She let it ring and ring, but there was no answer. That Saturday afternoon Elise had gone to work to catch up on a few things. Bubba was outside with his roosters. He didn’t hear the phone.

Next Norma called Pershing Gervais. He answered, and when he heard her crying, he asked her if Rose Mary was there. She said yes, she was, and he told Norma to go talk to her and Sidney.

Norma, in despair, called one more number. It belonged to her sister-in-law, Sarah Huff. Sarah and her second husband, Gus, were at home that afternoon, doing a few domestic chores. Sarah had put an Engelbert Humperdinck record on the stereo, a record Norma had given her. Gus was up in the attic. When Sarah answered the phone, Norma told her without preamble that she was going to kill herself.

“Oh, no, Norma, don’t do that,” Sarah said. “Look, I’m coming over right now. Gus and I are coming over.”

“I told you I’m gonna do it and I am,” Norma said, and then she fired the gun, getting off two shots—one entered her head, another went up into the kitchen ceiling.

Sarah heard the gun go off, then she heard the phone hit the counter, and she started screaming for her husband.

Rose Mary heard the shots and was on her feet, tripping over the afghan to get to the kitchen. She pushed open the door and couldn’t take in what she saw. Norma was on the floor. There was a lot of blood. She rushed to her. She started to cross over her to get to Sidney.

But Sidney heard the shots and leapt out of bed. He came through the hall into the kitchen, and as soon as Rose Mary saw him, she took off running, through the front yard and out to the road.