Obviously, Harry and Louis had nothing sexual in mind for this captive; the reason for her nudity was to help prevent her fleeing. The bed was heavy with blankets, and she’d clearly been keeping under the covers, but right now she was sitting and doubling over and crying. Right now was a bad period for her any way you sliced it.

Thing was, I recognized this young woman. Like Harry, I spent a lot of hours during cold nights like this with my eyes frozen to a TV screen. And that’s where I’d seen her: on the tube.

Not an actress, no-an heiress. Jonah Green’s daughter-“Daddy” was a Chicago media magnate whose name you’d recognize if I was using his real one, a guy who inherited money and wheeled-and-dealed his way into more, including one of the satellite super-stations I’d been wasting my eyes on lately. The Windy City’s answer to Ted Turner, right down to sailboating and baseball teams and womanizing.

His daughter was a little wild-seen in the company of rock stars (she had a tattoo of a star-not Justin Timberlake, a five-pointed star-on her white left breast, which I could see from the window) and was a Betty Ford clinic drop-out. Nonetheless, she was said to be the apple of her daddy’s eye, even if that apple was a tad wormy.

So Harry and Louis had put the snatch on the snatch; fair enough. Question was, was it their own idea, or something the Outfit put them up to?

I heard a door open, and peeked in carefully, just barely able to hear the muffled speech through the window.

Louis came in and tossed the box of Tampax in her lap.

The girl snarled, “You took long enough!”

“We’re being nice- you be nice.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you!..I need the bathroom.”

A clearly disgusted Louis dug a handcuff key out of his pocket, and worked at undoing her wrist.

The girl, a spoiled brat even in the presence of kidnappers, said, “Hurry the fuck up, faggot! You want blood everywhere?”