Made to Kill Read Online Free PDF

to the letters, taking the path at the front. I looked up. The letters looked good. In fact, they looked better than good. Fresh paint. No rust. They were made up of metal panels. Tin perhaps. Each was inlaid with light sockets and in each socket was a bulb. I looked out across the rest of the sign. There must have been four thousand bulbs screwed into the hillside. Some of the panels were a little flatter than the others too. Replacements.
    “They’ve done a good job,” said Ada.
    I shrugged.
    “You don’t remember, do you?” she asked.
    I shrugged again. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
    Ada laughed. It ran through on a loop twice but at the end was something new, like she was taking a drag on a cigarette. I wasn’t sure that was part of the recordings that made up her voice or just an echo of something rattling around inside my circuits.
    “The sign was falling apart last time I looked,” she said.
    “When was that exactly?” I asked.
    “I don’t remember.”
    “You and me both then.”
    “But they’ve fixed it up. Got it looking nice.”
    I pondered. I turned and looked at the view and pondered some more.
    “The movie premiere,” I said. “The big national one.” I turned back to the sign. “They were doing up Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for it. They must have done up the sign too. Part of the big show.”
    “All eyes on Hollywood,” said Ada.
    “I guess so.”
    “Wonderful, terrific. The city has done us proud, Ray. Now, keep looking.”
    I ground something inside my throat. It sounded like someone starting a cement mixer.
    “For what?” I asked.
    “That’s what we’re trying to find out, Ray. So how about you quit yakking and start snapping.”
    I walked around. I looked at the view and I looked at the letters of the Hollywood Sign. I moved around to the back. Each letter had a ladder or two on the back but there was nothing much to stand up on once you reached the summit.
    I followed Ada’s instructions and began taking photographs with my optics. After a few minutes I was onto my second roll of film. I had four packed in my chest.
    After a few more minutes I was wondering what the hell I was doing here. The mystery girl had done nothing but left us an address to check out which turned out to be an access road leading to the Hollywood Sign. And that was really a fabulous piece of information because here I was looking at the sign and admiring the view and finding nothing at all.
    The dirt around the sign was sandy and it kept my footprints real well, but then I did weigh an imperial ton so most surfaces keep my footprints real well. There were other markings in the dirt, but then I expected there to be. The sign had been renovated sometime in the very recent past and they must have had a lot of people and ladders and equipment up here.
    I looked back up at the sign and calculated a few angles for the hell of it, threw in some estimated wind speeds, average body weight, air resistance. Ada was right. The sign had some interesting possibilities.
    Then I turned away from the sign and headed down the hillside.
    Carefully.
     

 
     
     
     
5
     
     
    The hill was steep but boulders and ruts and the curve of geology made a convenient series of natural steps that spiraled downward. As I made my way down I started noticing the place was littered with bits of wood and metal and glass. Some of the metal and wood was white, some of it was stained orange with rust. The glass was mostly broken but it was clearly the remains of old light globes. It was the detritus from the sign, leftover from the renovation. There was a lot of it.
    “Hey, excuse me! Sir? Sir! You can’t be here, sir. Sir!”
    I turned to my left and there was a guy in blue coveralls over a blue denim shirt with a blue denim cap on his head. He was pushing fifty and had a good tan and a beard like Abraham Lincoln. He held a rake with a long wooden handle in one hand. Around his middle was a yellow rope that was slack and