The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld

by Chris Wiltz

  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 i
n 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.

  Norma still had the pistol in her hand. Sidney didn’t touch it, but he saw the small sofa pillow, and he put it under Norma’s head. The gun fell from her hand. She was still alive, wheezing hard, one arm waving, the other side apparently paralyzed, because she was looking at him with only her right eye. He looked back at her long enough for that image to be imprinted on him forever before he turned away to call the ambulance.

  When Rose Mary saw the car on Dad Penton Road, she started screaming that her aunt had been shot. The Sun sheriff’s deputies brought her back to the house. Rose Mary gave the deputies the letters, and when the ambulance arrived she got in it with Norma.

  Norma opened her right eye, and Rose Mary cried, telling her, “I’ll take care of you, Norma.” But Norma, groaning as if to tell Rose Mary to help her, kept trying to rip the oxygen mask from her face. The ambulance made a sharp turn, and Norma rolled toward Rose Mary. Rose Mary thought the whole side of her head had been blown off.

  At the hospital Rose Mary passed out for a while. When she awoke she was clutching a bag with Norma’s bloody clothes in it—the beautiful red pantsuit they’d cut off her body and the shoes with Rusty’s hair all over the soles. Rose Mary’s purse with Norma’s jewelry and money in it was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Last Word

  A knock on the trailer door interrupted Wayne’s quiet Saturday afternoon. He was surprised to see Jean’s sister. Marsha had driven over to tell him that the police had called and wanted Wayne to come to the house of his estranged wife. She didn’t know why.

  Wayne drove the fifteen miles from Bogalusa to Bush in a state of dread, trying to keep a rein on his imagination. Once he was on Dad Penton Road, he slowed enough to navigate the sharp turns, then bumped his yellow El Camino across the cattle guard onto the property.

  Norma’s two-tone blue Gran Torino was pulled up in the gravel driveway, no police or police cars in sight. Wayne parked a couple of car lengths behind the Torino. He stood with the door to his truck open and listened to the ominous silence. Then a blur of dark red caught his eye on the other side of the front yard. Rusty, their Irish setter, bounded from the honeysuckle and azaleas and raced toward him, twigs flying and leaves fluttering in the whirlwind. Norma didn’t usually let Rusty roam without her.

  With the dog Wayne walked around the house. The side door was wide open, strange because of the chill in the air, strange because Norma didn’t use that door much. He went around back and crossed the patio to the kitchen door. It too was open.

  Wayne went into the kitchen and practically walked into a pool of blood. He didn’t think; he mechanically skirted it to the bathroom, got a couple of large bath towels, and wiped it up. He called Rusty in, closed up the house, and drove to the St. Tammany Hospital. There he was told that his wife had been transported by ambulance across Lake Pontchartrain to the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, with a gunshot wound to the head. When Wayne arrived at Ochsner, Norma was in surgery. She died less than an hour later—at 5:07 p.m., December 14, 1974.

  When Wayne arrived at Ochsner and saw Sarah, he fell to his knees and buried his head in her lap, holding her so tightly that she was finally forced to tell him he was hurting her. He went home that night with Sarah and Gus.

  When Norma’s ashes were returned from the crematorium two days later, Sarah took on the task of disposing of them. Norma had told her that she wanted to be cremated and her ashes spread along the streets of the French Quarter. But Sarah hated the French Quarter after having worked Elmo’s clubs for so many years. She told Wayne she wouldn’t put Norma’s ashes downtown. Wayne gave Sarah no argument when she suggested that they take the ashes to Lake Pontchartrain, even though he knew Norma hated water.

  Sarah turned the urn over and let Norma’s ashes fall into the choppy water. As she did so, she thought to herself, Poor thing, she don’t know, but the fishes will be eating her pretty soon.

  Upstairs in the house in Bush is a room filled with Norma’s things. Her four-poster bed from Waggaman is there, along with her mahogany dresser and its matching mirror, a boudoir chair left over from Conti Street, a small antique drop-leaf table from her family, and a sliding-door rattan cabinet. Some of the dresser drawers are still lined with the flowered paper Norma put in them. In one is a heavy gold-tone metal belt, part of the costume she wore to a gay Mardi Gras ball; in another is a hairbrush, strands of Norma’s white hair still tangled in its bristles.

  A couple of years ago some of Jean’s relatives came to spend Halloween weekend with the Bernards. One of the women spent the night in Norma’s bed upstairs. It was an unseasonably warm Halloween night, but in the middle of it, the woman woke up shivering and aware of a most unpleasant odor. She slept fitfully for the next few hours, huddling beneath the light blanket on the bed, covering her nose with it to block the smell. In the morning she told Wayne and Jean about her strange night.

  Wayne laughed. “Well,” he said, “you were sleeping with your head just a fe
w inches from the urn that Norma’s ashes were in.” Not knowing what else to do with the urn and unable to part with it, he had sealed it in the wall behind the bed.

  A couple of months after Norma’s death, Wayne and Jean got back together, and Jean went to live in the house in Bush with her two sons, Jim and Darby; that was when Wayne decided he needed to do something with the urn.

  Even with Norma gone, Wayne and Jean’s relationship was rocky, and Jean returned more than once to Franklinton, thinking she should end things with him. But Wayne and her older son, Jim, who had never known his father, had formed an attachment by then. “I was doing what a man my age should have been doing,” Wayne said of that time. “I had a son.” Jean and her sons had helped get Wayne back into ordinary life. When Wayne and Jean married a couple of months later, he adopted Jim.

  But even for a while after they were married, Jean wasn’t sure that they would make it. She began to get superstitious. In their bedroom she thought she could see Norma’s face where two knotholes formed eyes, and other markings in the blond paneling created an oval face and waves of hair, like Norma’s. She tried hanging pictures over the spot, but she always felt weirdly compelled to take them down. She thought Norma had put a jinx on her and Wayne, to keep them from staying together.

  Not only that, Norma’s old dog, Rusty, had an overwhelming dislike of Jean. He wouldn’t go near her, and he snapped at her a couple of times; at night when she and Wayne tried to go to bed, Rusty would sit in the middle of the bed and growl. Jean thought Norma’s spirit had taken over the animal.

  But it wasn’t Jean that Rusty finally went after; it was her younger son. Rusty bit Darby in the face, an unforgivable act in Wayne’s eyes. He shot the dog.

  Norma’s rival hadn’t been just a younger woman; it had been children. Norma had never wanted children; she’d always said her animals were her children.