Read Online Made to Kill by Adam Christopher - Free Book Online Page A

stood in groups and they sat at any number of small round tables that were scattered across the room.
    And they were all rich. I could tell that by the clothes, the hair, the jewels, the jewels and the jewels. The light and smoke reduced the men to pinky-purple ghosts floating in the room, the white of their shirts and their teeth the only really distinguishable features. But the women glittered, what skin that wasn’t covered by evening wear slung low in the front as well as the back covered by pearls and diamonds and other treasures that took that pink and white light and did something special to it before shooting it back at my optics like a laser beam. There were a lot of people in the room but I recognized a large chapter by their photos that hung on the wall of the ice cream parlor just a half block away. Not every member of that parade was here in the Temple. I matched a dozen faces and none of them were Charles David or Eva McLuckie.
    I walked forward into the club. People parted. People looked at me and laughed but they laughed in that way that spoke of true happiness only found in those who don’t need to worry about their retirement. People nodded at me and those nods were appreciative, like they were watching the Mona Lisa stretching her legs around the gallery after hours. I couldn’t smile, not on the outside, so I trod carefully as I took a route across the room and tried not to feel like the Queen of England. I was big but people got out of my way. Nobody seemed to mind. In fact, everybody seemed real pleased to see me.
    Which I have to admit I liked, before I realized the reason why.
    There was no fear or unease in the room because these people—and their livelihoods —hadn’t been threatened by the robot revolution of the 1950s. These people were rich and famous and no doubt a lot of that wealth and fame was second generation or more—the movie business could run down a family line like hair and eye color. They operated in a rarified atmosphere where they could afford to be curious about a novelty like me. My presence was clearly unexpected but it was also amusing to them, if not downright entertaining. The Temple of the Magenta Dragon was wall-to-wall talent and I was wading neck-deep in the A-list—and for one night only I was part of the crowd.
    I reached a table and everyone at the table turned to me with big smiles. They looked about ready to burst into applause, so I saved them the trouble and took a left turn and I found myself at the bar.
    The bar was busy, mostly with wait staff who were loading up the champagne buckets like it was the only liquid left with which to put out the burning palace. I didn’t want to interrupt them to ask for a drink I couldn’t drink, so I turned around and watched the crowd and listened to the music.
    Some crowd. I matched a few more faces to the photos from the ice cream parlor. I looked at a few more jewels, a few more hair-dos, a few more jaws going up and down. The eyes of everyone in the room had left me and had returned to conversations and plunging necklines and the bottom of champagne glasses.
    Now I got what Ada had been talking about. This wasn’t just a nightclub. This was a temple. A place of solitude were the biggest cats in Hollywood could just come and be regular people who drank the most expensive liquor in town and wore diamonds like they were cut glass. This was a place you came to enjoy the company of your peers, unmolested by Mr. Joe Q. Public. Everyone here was the same. Everyone here could relax and not worry about being rich and not worry about being famous with the only other people who really understood what that meant.
    I started to make a list of who was I going to pump first. The fact that Charles David was a patron, maybe even a regular one, was obvious. The question of how and why he had got a hold of some company accounts was another matter. Someone here—scratch that, everyone here —would know him. Who to collar first, I had