by Chris Wiltz
Norma heard the front door crash to the floor. Carmen Miranda, who was standing next to her, jumped and let out a yelp. She scurried into the sunroom. Then the side door came down only a couple of feet from where Norma stood. Not just the door but the iron gate and the entire door frame. Freddy Soulé, with his bow tie and natty little mustache, stepped dapperly through the hole. Norma nearly snorted with disgust. From the front hallway and from behind him enough cops swarmed into the house to start a new precinct, including that good-looking little bastard from the last time. He raked her with his eyes.
Soulé held out a search warrant; when Norma put her hands on her hips, she realized she wasn’t dressed. Nevertheless, arms akimbo, she said coolly, “I understand you’re supposed to try to give me the warrant before you knock down the doors.”
He smiled at her, hitching his pants up with his thumbs. “We asked you to open the door, Norma.”
“I never denied you entrance,” she said heatedly. “I never even heard you until you crashed down my doors. What were you doing out there? Whispering?” Soulé stood smiling like a goon. She said to him, “If you don’t mind I’ll put my clothes on.” He pushed the warrant toward her. She snatched it out of his hand and went into her bedroom.
He followed her, staying so close as she stood in front of the closet that she finally said, “Do you mind?” He stepped back, and she pulled out one of her long, loose, flowy numbers. Then Soulé reached into the closet, pushing back the clothes as if he expected to find bodies in there.
But that was merely the beginning of the search. On and on it went because Soulé and the rest of the goons knew people were hiding, but they couldn’t find them. Soulé kept saying, “I saw a red dress on those stairs.”
Some of the cops went upstairs, where they discovered Terry’s letters from Donald Pryce, salacious enough to keep them enthralled. Norma could hear them reading passages aloud and repeating phrases as they tapped on the walls, looking for the hideout. Not much bound by sentiment or possessions, she considered it silly of Terry to have saved those letters.
She and Soulé stood by her desk. A huge black man entered the office from the courtyard.
“Who’s that?” Norma asked.
“That’s our informer. He was on the corner watching. He saw the car park in the back.”
“People park back there all the time,” Norma said. “They go down to those little honky-tonks around the corner.”
One of the young cops was going through the desk drawers, fooling with everything in a most irritating manner. Norma had taken the phones off the hook; he put them back. He read her personal mail. As a rule she didn’t leave any records or anything that could be considered evidence in her desk. But that night a letter from a woman named Honey Day was in the stack. Norma didn’t know her, but she’d heard of her, an abortionist in the Quarter. She’d written from jail, asking for a job when she was released.
The young cop showed Soulé the letter, making a big deal over it, saying it could be used as evidence against Norma. She said to him, “I don’t even know that broad, and she says in the letter she doesn’t know me. You stick that letter.”
In the hideout Rose Mary heard Soulé talking about the red dress, telling one of his officers to check upstairs, and she heard a different voice ask where the black book was. She could feel sweat dripping down her sides. The three Hispanics thought all this was kicks, part of the program. Maybe they were going to get into a little group sex, three for the price of one. “Tres muchachas,” they said, licking their lips and trying to find the girls’ mouths in the dark. The girls poked at them and told them to be quiet, and the boys poked them back and groped whatever their hands found. Maggie the poodle didn’t like the boys, and she was getting nervous. With one hand the girls slapped away the boys, with the other they petted Maggie, whispering, “Quiet, puppy, please be quiet, good puppy.” Rose Mary heard the tapping getting closer, louder. “Ssh, ssh, pleeeze,” she hissed. The taps were right behind her; she thought she could feel them in her spine. She held her breath. They moved on, stopped, and started on the front wall of the hideout. One of the boys giggled; Maggie let out a low growl. “Leon,” Rose Mary whispered, “this dog is going to bite them. Tell them to be still.”
“I can’t tell them anything,” Leon whispered back. “They don’t speak English.”
“Well, do something!”
“Do something?” Leon repeated. “What you want me to do?”
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 han
d 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 doctore
d 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?”
