The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (19 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Out-tricked

Joe Giarrusso went over the arrest reports and decided that the commander of the vice squad wasn’t producing. It was time for some fresh blood, and Giarrusso knew just the man to tap, Frederick Soulé, one of his top men when he’d been head of narcotics. Freddy was a smallish man with a black mustache who defined the word
dapper.
Because he always wore a colorful bow tie, the men called him Jellybean. He was easygoing and well liked, but Giarrusso also knew him to be shrewd, a schemer who thought fast on his feet, like the time he simply unscrewed a fuse to give the narcotics squad a few critical extra seconds to enter a building before the drugs were flushed. Beautiful.

As the new commander of vice, Soulé would be going head-to-head with Pershing Gervais, who had been his partner as a motorcycle cop when they joined the police department back in the forties.

Giarrusso told Soulé what his priorities were, and one of them was Norma Wallace. They discussed the fact that Norma had been operating for at least forty years and so far no one had ever gotten enough evidence to close her down. “She knows what it takes to stay in business,” Giarrusso commented.

One of the things it took was to have the goods on some very important people. Big shots liked to talk, especially after sex, over a
cigarette and a snifter of brandy. Rumors about her black book were going to make busting Norma touchy; some big people were going to be very nervous.

Soulé told Giarrusso that he wanted a free hand to take Norma Wallace down. Giarrusso said, “Handle it any way you want, Freddy. I’ve got confidence in you. And if you need money, we can get it from City Hall.” He added that what they were really going to need were a few new tricks.

Soulé smiled under his trim, black mustache. “With the prostitutes,” he said, “what we need is to
out-trick
’em.”

Giarrusso laughed, then told Soulé, “Just get her before Garrison does.”

When Soulé took over the vice squad, he kept three men from the previous command because they were supposed to be good, trustworthy, and experienced. One of them was Donald Pryce.

One day Soulé was in the office where the desk sergeant typed up applications for warrant. Pryce was also there. Soulé couldn’t have said what made him think so, but he got the feeling—one of those cop intuitions—that Pryce was hovering, waiting for something.

Soulé said to the desk sergeant, “Type me up an application for tomorrow night. I’m gonna go get Norma.” He gave the sergeant all the information he needed, then gestured toward Pryce. “Let Pryce here go get the judge to sign it. I got some things to take care of.”

Soulé found a place where he could watch. A few minutes later Pryce came out of the office and went to a pay phone at the end of the hall. Soulé was too far away to hear what he said, but he’d have put a bet on where Pryce called. He knew then that he’d better come up with a gimmick, and a slick gimmick at that, if he was going to get Norma Wallace.

A week later, on a balmy Friday night in June, Donald Pryce, with his neat crew cut and frat-boy good looks, arrived at Norma’s house dressed in a tuxedo and carrying a corsage. He was graduating from
college and had come to pick up Terry, who was going to the big dance with him. Norma liked Pryce, though she felt somewhat sorry for him, because he loved Terry and probably wanted to marry her but Terry was just a chippie at heart. She wouldn’t even sleep with him without pay; true, she had a kid to support, but she also knew that Pryce had money from his extracurricular activities over on Bourbon Street. While Terry finished dressing, Norma asked Pryce if he’d heard anything more about that Soulé bastard’s shenanigans, since the raid the previous Saturday night had never materialized, but Pryce said that the only warrant Soulé had was for the Old French Opera House over on Bourbon. Norma gave him his envelope, and, as a graduation present, she gave him a buyout—an entire evening with one girl—so he could spend the night with Terry.

Earlier that Friday, just before class was over, Freddy Soulé had gone to the police academy. He looked over the thirty to forty cadets and picked six of the youngest looking men in the class. He told them to meet him there, at the academy, at eleven the following night for an undercover operation. He gave them no details but instructed them to rent white tuxedo jackets and wear boutonnieres.

Late Saturday night Soulé told the cadets that they were to pose as college students out celebrating their graduation. First they were to go to the Jung Hotel on Canal Street, park their cars, and meet in the lobby. Then they were to taxi over to Dan’s International for a couple of drinks, and after that walk across the street to the Old French Opera House bar and attempt to make B-drinking cases and possibly an obscenity case—there had been reports of a girl taking off her clothes after midnight, as Saturday night became Sunday morning. Soulé gave each man about twenty-five dollars in different denominations, bills whose serial numbers he had recorded. He remembered that Norma had an eye for dark, good-looking young men like John Datri, so he selected Paul Nazar as the spokesman for the group. Nazar, a handsome Mediterranean type with deep brown hair combed back in a perfect wave, was egotistical and glib, a sweet talker if Soulé had ever seen one—his classmates called him the Silver Tongue. But Soulé
said absolutely nothing to his rascals, as he liked to call his men, about Norma Wallace’s house.

The six tuxedoed cadets hit Bourbon Street in high spirits—they were on their first big case, not even out of the academy yet. They went to Dan’s, where they bragged about graduating from college and acted drunk after two drinks. (Nazar, taking his role as spokesman with utmost seriousness, had only 7-Up.) Then Soulé’s rambunctious rascals went to the Old French Opera House to continue their revelry.

Midnight came and went, as did waitresses with regularly priced drinks. Close to two o’clock Nazar found a pay phone and called Soulé at the Morning Call coffee stand about five blocks away. Soulé wasn’t surprised to hear that no girls had offered his boys three-dollar bottles of champagne for a hundred. He told Nazar to round up the rascals and meet him at the Central Fire Station on Decatur Street. There he gave them more money, all prerecorded bills, after which he detailed Operation A.

What a dull Saturday night, not lucrative in the least, but Norma expected things to go that way in the summer, when most of the Good Men took their families to their beach houses on the coast. At two-thirty, four or five of the girls had asked if they could leave early, and Norma had told them to go. Six girls were left, along with Jackie—Rose Mary was out for the night—and a bartender from over on Chartres Street, who was having a couple of drinks in the second parlor. Norma looked at the clock. Almost three. She thought that if business didn’t pick up in the next few minutes, she’d get Terry to go over to Dan’s with her for a drink.

The troupe of six college types in white jackets reached 1026 Conti just then. They’d all heard about Norma Wallace, and they were a little jittery; if they succeeded tonight, it would be a real feather in their caps.

They knocked on the front door. A female voice from the side startled them. “Come around,” she said, and when they reached the shuttered window she admonished them sharply: “Don’t you know better than to go to the front?”

Five pairs of eyes turned to Paul Nazar. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Go to the back,” the woman told them.

As they went up the driveway, each cadet removed his boutonniere from his lapel and let it fall to the ground. If they failed to gain entrance, they were to retrieve the carnations, the flowers indicating their position to the backup officers.

Norma gave them the once-over through the little window. “I don’t know you,” she said.

Nazar was afraid she was going to close up on them before he had a chance to work his charm on her. “Sure you do, Norma. I’m Paul. Don’t you remember me?”

“Why should I?”

“I was here last year with a couple of my college buddies.”

“What school?”

“Southwestern, in Lafayette.”

“I have no idea who you are.”

“Gee,” Nazar said, sounding hurt. “I thought you’d never forget, the way we laughed.”

“Do you have any ID?”

All six cadets started digging for their wallets. Norma opened the door. They held out their driver’s licenses.

“Do you have any school ID?” Norma asked.

“Oh, no,” Nazar said without missing a beat, “we had to turn all that stuff in when we graduated, the library cards, everything. Look, Miss Norma, we’re out celebrating tonight. We just graduated!”

Nazar’s performance had loosened the tongues on the others, and they chimed in with “Yeah, we’re celebrating,” and “We need some women to celebrate with.”

“You better go away,” Norma told them.

Nazar slapped his hand to his forehead. “I can’t believe you don’t remember,” he said dramatically.

Bobby Frey, a roughly handsome fellow who would head up the vice squad one day, thought Nazar could use some help. “Some of us are going to law school,” he told Norma, his hand on his chest; then he gestured toward Billy McGaha and Jerry Lankford. “Tulane,” he said proudly.

Norma tipped her head back to look at the six foot eight Lank-ford. “You’re a tall one,” she remarked.

They all started talking at once about how they might go to law school, they weren’t sure, but wouldn’t she need a few good lawyers someday? Norma waited for the melee to settle. “I already have a few good lawyers,” she said coolly. “I think you boys better go on now.”

But Nazar wasn’t about to give up. He let out a loud burp. “Gee, Miss Norma,” he said, “I’m really kind of sick from drinking. Do you think you could get me something?” She looked at him hard. He swallowed another burp, his hand rolling as if he was about to say something and, just as he opened his mouth, let go another whopper. “Sorry,” he muttered, clutching his stomach.

Norma laughed. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find for you.” And she let them into her parlor.

The six cadets looked around at the finery—the Tiffany lamps, the red-velvet drapes, the elaborate scrolled furniture, the crystal chandelier—just like an old-time whorehouse out of a movie, except for the jukebox over in the corner. Ronald Vega put a quarter in the slot. They were into the act now, punching at each other, wowing and wondering aloud where the ladies were. They were actually
in.
But they had only thirty minutes before Freddy Soulé busted down the doors.

Norma returned with an Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water. Paul drank it down, belching softly. “Much better,” he said and put his soft brown bedroom eyes—irresistible to most women—on Norma. “Oh, please, Miss Norma, we’re in
dire
need of some ladies!”

What the hell, Norma thought, and she called the six girls who were still in the house.

Nazar’s eyes popped for a beautiful honey blonde named Betty. He followed her up to a second-floor bedroom right off the balcony. First thing, Betty whipped out his penis and checked it for venereal disease. Then they began negotiating a price.

Vega couldn’t believe his luck getting Terry. Too bad all they were going to do was arrest these girls! He went into a room with her, and as soon as she had the door closed, she grabbed his penis. As she milked it, she said jokingly, “Give me some money.” Vega took out a twenty-dollar bill. Terry asked coyly, “Do you have a dollar for the maid?”

Bobby Frey picked a girl named Diana. Diana’s boyfriend was a third-generation pimp called BeBe Anselmo. (When Norma heard who Diana was going with, she exclaimed, “Oh my God, lightning has struck
three
times!” One of her girls had had a baby with BeBe’s grandfather; another of her girls had knifed BeBe the second.) BeBe the third was a heroin addict who wasn’t going to be happy with Diana’s paltry earnings that slow Saturday night. So the first thing she said to Frey was “Let’s talk business. Just what do you want to do?”

“Anything, baby,” he said with feeling. “What do you want to do?”

“A little bit of everything,” Diana said coquettishly, and he handed over every dollar he had.

Joe Liemann got his penis grabbed by a cute little number named Linda and gave her every bit of his money too.

Jerry Lankford folded his six foot eight frame onto the stairway to the third floor, where he and his girl, Julie, waited for a room. As they sat there, Julie asked, “What do you want tonight?”

Lankford said, “All I can get.”

“Okay,” Julie replied and took twenty-five dollars off him. She left briefly to give the money to Norma before they went to their room.

Billy McGaha never made it out of the parlor. His girl told him to wait there for her, but she didn’t get back before there was something of a disturbance upstairs.

All the girls turned the money over to Norma before they got down to business. Paul Nazar, though, had been charged by Soulé to follow the path of the money, since it would be their best evidence in court. It was time to get moving, because Soulé had said thirty minutes tops, then he was busting in. Nazar hurried the negotiations, and when Betty took his money, he followed her out to the balcony, talking as he went. “Do you mind if I go out to the veranda with you?” She hesitated but finally nodded. “Need a little fresh air,” he went on. He looked out over the courtyard, his eyes sweeping right and left, and said, “This is a beautiful house! I like the motif.”

“Uh-huh,” Betty replied. She called out to Norma and dropped the money down to her.

Nazar leaned on the rail to the balcony. “What a great courtyard!” he gushed. “All those plants . . . do I hear water? A fountain? Wow, this is really something.” All the time he talked he was watching
Norma. He saw her go into the glassed sunroom, where he had a partial view of her desk to the right of the door and, behind that, another door that led to a bathroom.

He went back into the bedroom with Betty. He talked incessantly, asking her questions such as how she came to work at Norma’s, making comments about the bed with the canopy and the pretty little chairs in the room.