In the tank, the game had restarted after the referees finally got Schmidt and Shinsecki separated and sent Shinsecki to the penalty box. Zurich was clearly in a mood to take out their indignation on the ice. Montreal was now down by six and beginning to show signs of being rattled by the humiliation.

He noticed her glass was getting low and ordered her another drink, and spent most of the rest of the game teasing her thigh with one hand under the bar. By the time Montreal was down by nine he was starting to get bored with the slaughter and interested in more personal pleasures.

“Got a question.” He leaned over and breathed against her ear. “You said you liked a man to take charge? I’m going out the front door. Don’t follow. There’s a back exit between the restrooms. It says an alarm will go off, but it won’t. If you really meant what you said, wait five minutes and then leave the bar, come out the back door and I’ll be waiting. You want me to take charge?”

She nodded rapidly. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

“Okay, then that’s what you do. You do that, and I will.” He walked out of the bar without looking back, hoping she was tipsy enough and horny enough to do as he’d asked. He wanted her, bad, but he hadn’t lived this long by being seen leaving bars with his victims. The night air smelled crisp as he walked past a couple of other bars to the parking lot, the crispness underlain by the almost imperceptibly faint tinges of stale urine, vomit, and sex that always linger in the streets outside popular establishments dedicated to the nightlife. The adrenaline rush was hitting his system and he wondered, as he always did, whether he had set the hook and played the line in just right. Would she come to him, or would she get away?

The timing was perfect. Just as he got the car pulled up to the curb in back, hidden from view on one side by the bar, on another by the large dumpster out back, she came tottering out the small back door. Another plus for him, the light was burned out back here, and he only saw her by the scattered illumination from his own headlights as she stumbled slightly, on a bit of loose gravel maybe, and opened the passenger side door.