Free The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld by Chris Wiltz

city politics, and under him the spoils system flourished. He had legitimate civic achievements as well, such as decreasing the city’s debt significantly, and under his leadership New Orleans supported cultural organizations like the ballet and the symphony, restored historically important buildings, and improved garbage collection. Butthe inbred practice of graft continued. The price tags at the Maestri furniture store, where all the madams bought their furniture, still included a markup, as they had through the twenties, sometimes more than a hundred percent, that went directly to police protection. With Bob Maestri mayor and George Reyer chief of police, the town was as wide open as at any time in its history.
    In the wake of Huey Long’s rule in New Orleans, Maestri didn’t hear much hue and cry from concerned citizens about vice and corruption. Perhaps they were relieved to have money moving again and banks and business functioning normally. To keep up appearances Maestri appointed a respected doctor as commissioner of public safety. But Frank Gomila was not interested in reform. To ensure public safety, he included in his duties a twice-weekly inspection of the girls at Norma Wallace’s house.
    Norma bought influence when she bought furniture at Maestri’s store, but as Clint Bolton said in his New Orleans magazine article, “Influence is not always a matter of dollars and cents.”
    At the top of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1936 was a hoodlum named Alvin Karpis, who was sought for bank and train robbery, kidnapping, and murder. Karpis fancied the girls at cathouses, and during the spring of that year all the hookers and madams in town seemed to know that a man who fit the FBI’s description of Karpis was on the prowl in the New Orleans area. Circulating with his description was the detail that he sported a huge diamond ring.
    J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, particularly wanted Karpis and had put out the word to every police chief in the country. George Reyer was the one who delivered. Bureau agents arrested Karpis at the corner of Canal and Jefferson Davis Parkway without a shot being fired. Hoover was whisked to New Orleans for a photo opportunity that made it look as if he’d been in on the capture.
    Bolton said to Norma, “Reyer alerted the FBI. Who alerted Reyer?”
    Norma answered, “Karpis was in my place a night or two before the FBI picked him up. When I saw the pictures in the paper after thearrest, I knew for a fact that it was Karpis. Especially when they mentioned his big diamond ring. Honey, that was a headlight! I figured him for something big-time, a gambler, crook, something. But he behaved well, was generous with the girls, and we always had a lot of high rollers comin’ in, so I didn’t think too much about it. Except that was a real beauty of a ring.”
    In the underworld no one admitted anything unless he absolutely had to, but with the capture of Alvin Karpis, the flamboyant Reyer made a name as chief of police, and Norma became a woman with influence. Reyer dropped in at her Dauphine Street house regularly, along with his equally colorful chief of detectives, John Grosch, who cut quite a figure in a white linen suit with a fresh rose in the lapel. The local FBI agents spent time in Norma’s parlor too. She doled out the information, they doled out the protection. It was a fine line to walk—to keep her influence without getting a reputation as a stoolie. She walked it with perfect balance. With friends in high places and her wealth, Norma Wallace at thirty-five years old became one of the most powerful women in the New Orleans underworld.

CHAPTER FIVE
    My Two Most Exciting Lovers
    “My husbands were all better than I was,” Norma confided to her tape recorder. To Howard Jacobs she said wistfully, “All my marriages were beautiful. I’m the bossy, domineering type, and I’ll take full responsibility for breaking ‘em up. The trouble was, my husbands all