Full Black - Brad Thor [5]
The two men sat in silence for several moments. The night air was heavy, damp from the marine layer moving in from the coast. The estate’s wrinkled oaks and towering pines swayed like sleeping horses in a neatly manicured pasture.
Behind a long row of brushed aluminum garage doors were several million dollars’ worth of high-end luxury automobiles. In the glass-and-steel house next to it were other expensive toys and priceless pieces of art. Behind the home was a hand-laid mosaic swimming pool, a three-hole golf course, and exotic gardens that would have rivaled anything in ancient Babylon. To most outside observers, the man in the passenger seat had it all, and then some.
Larry Salomon, a handsome fifty-two-year-old movie producer, was the man with the Midas touch, or so said those with short memories who seemed not to recall or not to care about how hard he had worked to get to where he was.
Even the politicians Salomon had hosted at his home for fund-raisers, back before he stopped doing fund-raisers, loved to smile and tell him how easy he had it. Hollywood, they would say, is a petting zoo, compared to the jungles of D.C.
None of them knew what they were talking about. Hollywood was a lot like a Charles Dickens novel. It could be the best of places; it could be the worst of places. Machiavelli, Dante, Shakespeare … all would have felt at home here. Tinseltown was a bustling contradiction.
It was a modern-day Zanzibar; a slave market where souls were bartered, sold, and stolen seemingly on the hour, every hour. It was also a place of incredible genius and beauty, where dreams still came true.
Hollywood was where some of man’s most endearing and compelling stories were told and retold. It was home to a globe-spanning industry that could frighten and terrify, but more important, could uplift and inspire.
Hollywood was a place where one creative mind could join with others to craft something with the ability to affect the lives of millions upon millions of people. It was a place, for most people, where magic was still alive. Unfortunately, and despite his success, Larry Salomon was no longer one of those people.
In his mind, magic was for the woefully naïve. “Happily ever after” existed only in fairy tales and of course, their modern-day equivalent, the movies. It was smoke and mirrors, and Salomon knew it all too well.
“Larry?” repeated the man who had driven the movie producer home. “I want to make sure you’re going to be okay.”
“I miss her,” said Salomon.
Luke Ralston put his Porsche in neutral and pulled up the parking brake. He had worked on Salomon’s past six films, and the two men had developed a very deep bond. With his tall, fit frame, rugged features, whitened teeth, and expensive haircut, Ralston looked like he could have been one of the producer’s top actors, if you overlooked the limp that plagued him from time to time.
But Ralston wasn’t an actor. He was what was known in Hollywood parlance as a “technical consultant.” A former Delta Force operative, Ralston used his extensive military experience to make sure Salomon’s actors and actresses looked like they knew what they were doing in their action scenes, especially when those scenes had to do with firearms, hand-to-hand combat, evasive driving, or any number of other tactical situations.
“It’s supposed to get easier,” Salomon continued, staring into space. “That’s what everybody tells you. They tell you to stay strong. But it doesn’t get easier.”
A mist had begun to build on the windshield. The temperature was dropping.
Ralston pondered raising the car’s windows, but decided not to. It would have broken the mood and sent the two men in their separate directions too early. Salomon still needed to talk, so Ralston would sit and listen for as long as it took.
A pronounced silence grew between them. The only sound came from the throb of the GT3’s engine