“His desk was four feet from mine,” she said. “But I never went out with him. There was no social contact whatsoever, but Mrs. Bolton didn’t believe that. She came into the office and accused me of-well, called me a ‘dirty hussy,’ if you must know. I asked her to step out into the hall where we wouldn’t attract so much attention, and she did-and proceeded to tear my clothes off me. She tore the clothes off my body, scratched my neck, my face, kicked me, it was horrible. The attention it attracted…oh, dear. Several hundred people witnessed the sight-two nice men pulled her off of me. I was badly bruised and out of the office a week. When I came back, Mr. Bolton had been discharged.”
A pattern was forming here, one I’d seen before; but usually it was the wife who was battered and yet somehow endured and even encouraged the twisted union. Only Bolton was a battered husband, a strapping man who never turned physically on his abusing wife; his only punishment had been to withhold that money from her, dole it out a few bucks at a time. That was the only satisfaction, the only revenge, he’d been able to extract.
At the Van Buren Hotel I knocked on the door of what had been Bolton’s room. 3C.
Young Charles Winston answered. He looked terrible. Pale as milk, only not near as healthy. Eyes bloodshot. He was in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. The other times I’d seen him he’d been fully and even nattily attired.
“Put some clothes on,” I said. “We have to talk.”
In the saloon below the hotel we did that very thing.
“Joe was a great guy,” he said, eyes brimming with tears. He would have cried into his beer, only he was having a mixed drink. I was picking up the tab, so Mildred Bolton was buying it.
“Is your mother still in town?”
He looked up with sharp curiosity. “No. She’s back in Woodstock. Why?”
“She was up at the office shortly before Bolton was killed.”
“I know. I was there, too.”
“Oh?” Now, that was news.
“We went right over, after the hearing.”
“To tell him how it came out?”
“Yes, and to thank him. You see, after that incident out in front, last Wednesday, when they took me off to jail, Mother went to see Joe. They met at the Twelfth Street Bus Depot. She asked him if he would take care of my bail-she could have had her brother do it, in the morning, but I’d have had to spend the night in jail first.” He smiled fondly. “Joe went right over to the police station with the money and got me out.”
“That was white of him.”
“Sure was. Then we met Mother over at the taproom of the Auditorium Hotel.”
Very posh digs; interesting place for folks who lived at the Van Buren to be hanging out.
“Unfortunately, I’d taken time to stop back at the hotel to pick up some packages my mother had left behind. Mrs. Bolton must’ve been waiting here for me. She followed me to the Auditorium tap-room, where she attacked me with her fists, and told the crowd in no uncertain terms, and in a voice to wake the dead, that my mother was”-he shook his head-“‘nothing but a whore’ and such. Finally the management ejected her.”
“Was your mother in love with Joe?”
He looked at me sharply. “Of course not. They were friendly. That’s the extent of it.”
“When did you and your mother leave Bolton’s office?”
“Yesterday? About one thirty. Mrs. Bolton was announced as being in the outer office, and we just got the hell out.”
“Neither of you lingered.”
“No. Are you going to talk to my mother?”
“Probably.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said glumly.
I drank my beer, studying the kid.
“Maybe I won’t have to,” I said, smiled at him, patted his shoulder, and left.
I met with public defender Backus in a small interrogation room at the First District Station.
“Your client is guilty,” I said.
I was sitting. He was standing. Pacing.
“The secretary was in te outer office at all times,” I said. “In view of other witnesses. The Winstons left around one thirty. They were seen leaving by the elevator operator on duty.”
“One of them could have sneaked back up the stairs…”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, this meeting ends my participation, other than a report I’ll type up for you. I’ve used up the hundred.”
From my notes I read off summaries of the various interviews I’d conducted. He finally sat, sweat beading his brow, eyes slitted behind the glasses.
“She says she didn’t do it,” he said.
“She says a lot of things. I think you can get her off, anyway.”
He smirked. “Are you a lawyer now?”
“No. Just a guy who’s been in the thick of this bizarre fucking case since day one.”
“I bow to your experience if not expertise.”
“You can plead her insane, Sam.”
“A very tough defense to pull off, and besides, she won’t hear of it. She wants no psychiatrists, no alienists involved.”
“You can still get her off.”
“How in hell?”
I let some air out. “I’m going to have to talk to her before I say any more. It’s going to have to be up to her.”
“You can’t tell me?”
“You’re not my client.”
Mildred Bolton was.
And she was ushered into the interrogation room by a matron who then waited outside the door. She wore the same floral print dress, but the raccoon stole was gone. She smiled faintly upon seeing me, sat across from me.
“You been having fun with the press, Mildred, haven’t you?”
“I sure have. They call me ‘Marble Mildred.’ They think I’m cold.”
“They think it’s unusual for a widow to joke about her dead husband.”
“They’re silly people. They asked me the name of my attorney and I said, ‘Horsefeathers.’” She laughed. That struck her very funny; she was proud of herself over that witty remark.
“I’m glad you can find something to smile about.”
“I’m getting hundreds of letters, you know. Fan mail! They say, ‘You should have killed him whether you did or not.’ I’m not the only woman wronged in Chicago, you know.”
“They’ve got you dead bang, Mildred. I’ve seen some of the evidence. I’ve talked to the witnesses.”
“Did you talk to Mrs. Winston? It was her fault, you know. Her and that…that boy.”
“You went to see Joe after the boy was fined in court.”
“Yes! I called him and told him that the little degenerate had been convicted and fined. Then I asked Joe, did he have any money, because I didn’t have anything to eat, and he said yes. So I went to the office and when I got there he tried to give me a check for ten dollars. I said, ‘I guess you’re going to pay that boy’s fine and that’s why you haven’t any money for me.’ He said, ‘That’s all you’re going to get.’ And I said, ‘Do you mean for a whole week? To pay rent out of and eat on?’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s all you get.’”
“He was punishing you.”
“I suppose. We argued for about an hour and then he said he had business on another floor-that boy’s lawyer is on the ninth floor, you know-and I followed him, chased him to the elevator, but he got away. I went back and said to Miss Houyoux, ‘He ran away from me.’ I waited in his office and in about an hour he came back. I said, ‘Joe, I have been your wife for fourteen years and I think I deserve more respect and better treatment than that.’ He just leaned back in his chair so cocky and said, ‘You know what you are?’ And then he said it.”
“Said it?”
She swallowed; for the first time, those marble eyes filled with tears. “He said, ‘You’re just a dirty old bitch.’ Then he said it again. Then I said, ‘Just a dirty old bitch for fourteen years?’ And I pointed the gun at him.”
“Where was it?”
“It was on his desk where I put it. It was in a blue box I carried in with me.”
“What did you do with it, Mildred?”
“The box?”
“The gun.”
“Oh. That. I fired it at him.”
I gave her a handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes with it.
“How many times did you fire the gun, Mildred?”