Vampyres of Hollywood Read Online Free

his life. Just something he picked up from his dad, who ran the bar before him. He hadn’t been to the Old Country, either. The customers love it.
    O’Brien looked up and smiled when he saw me and moved down the bar with that curious gliding motion that old-time bar-keeps seem to perfect. “Heineken or Bud?”
    I eased onto a bar stool that was more tape than leather. “How about a Coke.”
    “Ah jeez, Peter, I don’t see ya for months at a time and then ya ask for a Coke? Don’t tell me you’re doin’ the meetings now, will ya?” He looked as if he was about to cry.
    “No meetings, Young. Just common sense. Don’t want one of your sleazy customers calling the Enquirer to report Beverly Hills’s finest was drinking on the job.”
    “Ah, you’ve gone all holy on me. I’ll be goddamned,” he whispered, shaking his head. He popped the cap off a Coke and slid it toward me, then moved down to the other end of the bar. The guy sitting down there looked to be asleep. O’Brien put a bottle of Dos Equis in front of him, added a whiskey chaser, and rang up the sale, pulling a twenty from under the guy’s fingers and placing the change on the bar. He came back down to join me.
    “So if you’re not drinkin’, then you must be here on business, and if you’re here on business, you don’t even have to tell me: it’s the Cinema Slayer thing, right?”
    I stopped the Coke halfway to my mouth. “The what?”
    “The Cinema Slayer. That’s what they’re callin’ it in the papers this morning. Everything’s got to have marquee value, don’t y’know. A logo. Son of Sam. Zodiac Killer. Helter Skelter.”
    I held up my hand before he listed every case from the past thirty years. “How’d you know I was here about the murders?”
    “It’s elementary, my dear Watson. You’re not here to drink, you’re here to talk. And the only thing anyone in law enforcement is talkin’ about these days is the Cinema Slayer. So…I figured it out, just like Sherlock Holmes.”
    “You’ve watched too many movies, Young. You should go back to the printed word. Holmes never said that in the books. He never said ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’”
    “Did he say ‘Catch the local news at nine’?”
    “They announced it? On the news?”
    “Ah, you’re such a fine detective. In fact, that’s even what they said. ‘One of our finest officers is in charge,’ if I remember correctly. Then they showed that picture they always show, the one with you gettin’ the medal.”
    That medal will follow me to my grave. I pulled a kid out of the Los Angeles River in the middle of the rainstorm and suddenly I’m the poster child for heroics. The kid was so scared he bit me on the butt before I could get a good hold on him. That’s not water dripping off my face in the news pics; it’s tears from clenching back a scream. I’ve still got the scars, two semi-circles of perfect teeth marks.
    “So I’m glad it’s you that’s in charge, Detective, and I’m glad you know where to come for information. I was hopin’ you’d get here. If you hadn’t, I’d of called you myself.” Young ran up a “no sale” on the cash register, opened it, and removed a business card from under the cash drawer. He pushed it over to me.
    It was a black rectangle of cheap cardboard. Tiny twinkling stars dotted above a graveyard and a tilted cross. Embossed across the heavens was the legend “Death Star Maps. The Ultimate Guide to the Dead Stars.”
    “You remember Benny?” O’Brien said.
    “Remind me?”
    “Benzedrine Benny.”
    “I remember him. He still around?”
    “Yeah. Only now it’s Biblical Benny. He got religion. He sells these Star Maps over on the corner of Sunset and Rexford.”
    “Him and a hundred other guys.”
    “Benny specializes. Sells tickets to the Grave Line Tours and maps to the places where celebrities bought the farm. Tourists eat that stuff up. He’s got himself a good spiel, a smart black suit, and a white