Jerry Lapps is an old man now — not as old as me, but old. A gray-haired, paunchy old boy. Not the greasy-haired J.D. who I was glad to see go to hell and Stateville. He’s been in custody longer than any other inmate in the Illinois prison system. Long before courses were offered to prisoners, he was the first Illinois inmate to earn a college degree. He then helped and advised other convicts with organizing similar self-help correspondence-course programs. He taught himself electronics and became a pretty fair watercolor artist. Right now he’s in Vienna Prison, a minimum-security facility with no fences and no barred windows. He’s the assistant to the prison chaplain.
Over the years, the press and public servants and surviving relatives of the murder victims — including JoAnn’s sister Jane — have fought Lapps’ parole. He is portrayed as the first of a particular breed of American urban monster — precursor to Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy.
Bob Keenan died last year. His wife Norma died three years ago.
Sam Flood — a.k.a. Sam Giancana — was hit in his home back in ’75, right before he was supposed to testify before a Senate committee about Outfit/CIA connections.
Of the major players, Lapps is the only one left alive. Lapps and me.
What the hell. I’ve had my fill of revenge.
Let the bastard loose.
If he’s faking rehabilitation like he once faked amnesia, if he hurts anybody else, shit — I’ll haul the nine millimeter out of mothballs and hobble after him myself.
23
My son was born just before midnight, on September 27, 1947.
We named him Nathan Samuel Heller, Jr.
His mother — exhausted after twelve hours of labor, face slick with sweat, hair matted down — never looked more beautiful to me. And I never saw her look happier.
“He’s so small,” she said. “Why did he take so long making his entrance?”
“He’s small but he’s stubborn. Like his mother.”
“He’s got your nose. He’s got your mouth. He’s gorgeous. You want to hold him, Nate?”
“Sure.”
I took the little bundle, and looked at the sweet small face and experienced, for the first and only time before or since, love at first sight.
“I’m Daddy,” I told the groggy little fellow. He made saliva bubbles. I touched his tiny nose. Examined his tiny hand — the miniature palm, the perfect little fingers. How could something so miraculous happen in such an awful world?
I gave him back to his mother and she put him to her breast and he began to suckle. A few minutes on the planet, and he was getting tit already. Life wasn’t going to get much better.
I sat there and watched them and waves of joy and sadness alternated over me. It was mostly joy, but I couldn’t keep from thinking that a hopeful mother had once held a tiny child named JoAnn in her arms, minutes after delivery; that another mother had held little Jerry Lapps in her gentle grasp. And Caroline Williams and Margaret Johnson were once babes in their mother’s arms. One presumes even Otto Bergstrum and James Watson and, Christ, George Morello were sweet infants in their sweet mothers’ arms, once upon a time.
I promised myself that my son would have it better than me. He wouldn’t have to have it so goddamn rough; the depression was ancient history, and the war to end all wars was over. He’d want for nothing. Food, clothing, shelter, education, they were his birthright.
That’s what we’d fought for, all of us. To give our kids what we never had. To give them a better, safer place to live in. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
For that one night, settled into a hard hospital chair, in the glow of my brand-new little family, I allowed myself to believe that that hope was not a vain one. That anything was possible in this glorious post-war world.