Made to Kill Read Online Free Page B

turned left with one hand on the wheel. The narrow winding tarmacked road became a narrow winding dirt road and after a minute there was nothing in the rearview but a brown cloud of dust. Seemed like a strange place to be going.
    “What was Charles David doing up here anyway?” I asked.
    “Maybe he was taking a hike,” said Ada. “People hike. Even actors.”
    I passed a small sign on a big pole but the sign was covered with dust and I couldn’t read it so I kept going. Then the road ended in a big gate and beyond the gate was a building made of corrugated steel, something like a Quonset hut but smaller and with a flat roof. In front of the hut was nothing except a pick-up in a surprising shade of lime. That was all I could see. The road up to the gate was lined with tall brush that obscured the view of anything else.
    The gate was closed. It was also locked.
    “Dead end,” I said.
    “Then better bring it back to life,” said Ada.
    I put the telephone down and left the car running. The padlock on the gate was pretty big and strong but I was bigger and stronger and I broke it without breaking a sweat. Now unlocked, the gate swung open under its own gravity and I walked back to the car and got in it and drove through. I stopped next to the pick-up, then saw what was out of the rear view and reversed, swung the car around, and backed up against the hut.
    Then I killed the car and stepped out, taking a moment to take in the view, which was worthy of quiet appreciation. It looked like half of California was spread out below me, beyond the hills that tumbled down and vanished into a plain as flat as an ocean. I was too far and too high to see any detail, but Hollywood basked in the afternoon sun and that sun caught on windshields and windows and the metal roofs of some buildings, making the whole place sparkle like seaweed washed up on a beach. A little farther, on the left, was downtown Los Angeles proper, a few tall fingers grasping through a reddish haze.
    I scanned back to Hollywood and turned down the brightness in my optics and had a little look but I couldn’t see my office.
    Then the telephone rang again. I turned back to the car and reached into it and pulled the phone out, stretching the coiled lead out through the door as I stood and kept on drinking in the scene.
    I got in first this time.
    “Ada.”
    “Wow, Raymondo, what a view, baby!”
    I smiled on the inside. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so enthusiastic.”
    “Hey,” she said, “I don’t get out much.”
    “You don’t get out ever. And you have no idea what I’m looking at.”
    “Hey, can’t a gal use her imagination? I know your location and I know your elevation. The rest is easy, like that .”
    There was a sound like someone snapping their fingers in my ear.
    “I’m not sure you can guess what else is up here, Ada.”
    “So why don’t you give me the tour, chief?”
    I switched the phone to my other hand and rested my free arm on the roof of the car. I looked down to my right. The steel hut and its parking lot—if you could call it a parking lot—was on a plateau that was artificial, cut into the hillside. The edge of the plateau dropped off fiercely, which allowed the remarkable view. But just over the edge was the top of another structure. It was a series of white panels, elaborately arranged into geometric shapes on the front of wooden telegraph poles and crisscrossed with smaller poles as reinforcement. Even though I couldn’t see any more than the top of edge of the structure and even though I was looking at it from behind, it didn’t take much detective work to see what it was.
    I was standing in a dirt parking lot that overlooked the back of the Hollywood Sign. I said as much to Ada, and then I said , “seems our movie star was sightseeing.”
    “Go take a closer look, chief. Don’t worry about the telephone. Nobody is watching.”
    I felt a little electric surge down my left side. I was supposed to use the