Vampyres of Hollywood Read Online Free PDF Page B

a hand-written sign with the legend “BIBAL STUDIES” in shaky capitals. Obviously this man of the Lord had no access to a dictionary. Or a Bible.
    Benny’s younger than I am, but you’d never know it by looking at him. He’s got pasty red skin and long gray hair, yellowed from a lifetime of nicotine, with teeth and nails to match. His hairline’s receding, so his head looks like a skullcap with a ponytail attached. He’d grown a beard since the last time I’d seen him, as in “Biblical Benny, the Christian Prophet,” and I swear to God he looked like he was wearing a priest’s cassock. I’d no doubt it had probably been stolen from the Good Shepherd Catholic Church on Bedford. It had to be 104 degrees outside and he was wringing sweat out of his beard.
    He stared at me as I got out of the car, squinting into the sun.
    “Can I help you, brother? You wanna see dead stars or share the Word of God? Jesus loves you, you know.”
    “I’ve always suspected that, Benny.”
    “Ah, a voice of authority. A voice of confidence.” He shaded his eyes with his hands and tried to focus. “A hard man, an arrogant man.” Recognition finally set in. “Ah, Detective Peter King, Beverly Hills’s finest.”
    “Your brain may be toast, Benny, but your memory’s still good.” I squatted down beside him, upwind. This was one prophet who hadn’t been cleansed. “I hear you’ve been saved.”
    Benny nodded vigorously. I moved a bit farther away in case something jumped from his beard to my suit. “I found Jesus,” he said. “You can, too.”
    “I’m not looking for Him right now, Benny. Right now I’m just looking for information.” I lifted one of the Death Star Maps from the cardboard box at his feet. “How’s business?”
    “Booming,” he said gleefully. “Them recent killings are bringin’ in a lot of tourists. They all wanna see where the murders took place.” He glanced at a cheap Mickey Mouse watch on his arm. It was missing the minute hand. “I’m bookin’ deluxe tours right and left.”
    “Deluxe, huh? What makes them deluxe?”
    “Well, it’s everything in the Regal tour, you know, the graveyards, the homes, and the check-out spots, plus the top ten sex spots.” He saw my blank look. “The places the stars go to get their rocks off. Man, don’t you read the paper?”
    “What about Jason Eddings, Mai Goulart, and Tommy Gordon? You’ve got their check-out spots on your tour?”
    “Sure do,” he announced proudly.
    “And you’ve even got them on your map.” I’d opened one and checked.
    “Yes, sir. We’re right up-to-date at Death Star Maps.”
    I folded the map over and slapped it down into Benny’s lap with just enough force to make him jump. “A bit too up-to-date, Benny. You had these maps printed before Tommy Gordon died.”
    He started to shake his head.
    “Don’t talk,” I said, “listen. I said I want information and you’re going to give it to me. You don’t want to lose your vendor’s license, do you?” Then I realized he probably didn’t have a vendor’s license. “Or maybe this entire box of maps? Nice clean, newly printed maps.”
    “Hey, you can’t do that—”
    “I can do just about anything I want, Benny. Including ordering up a psych evaluation for a Jesus freak I happen to find stretched out in the road in the middle of Rexford Drive. Ten days in a psych ward: you don’t want to do that again, do you?”
    “Aw, man. Don’t even talk about that.” His eyes were rolling around his head like marbles in a pinball machine. “You don’t want to know what they did to me the last time I was in there.”
    “It’s your call, Benny. Nobody hears what you say except me. Where’d you hear about the dead stars?”
    “I got a friend at Anticipation Studios.”
    “The horror film outfit?”
    “Yeah, she works there. She told me about the dead stars. I just put them on the maps. I didn’t realize until later that one of them wasn’t dead when she told