The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld

by Chris Wiltz

  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.

  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.