Run 04: Ash Country

Mr. Johnson's Pitch#

Tony Zamora, the crew's own Knight Errant contact, behind the counter of the outreach kitchen on the Oceanwide podium, in an apron and out of uniform, working a queue that has been getting longer all year. Asked about the apron: they fed him while he was asking his questions, somebody asked whether he could carry a tray, and he had nothing better to do with the hours.

What Tony told Vinnie#

Sitting on a crate with a cup he did not pay for, in this order:

1. There is no fee and he is not a Johnson.
2. His cousin Tony Salas, the gate guard off the Melrose lot, has not been seen in eleven weeks. The family has been asking for a month.
3. No missing-person file, because a corporation does not open one for a man with no contract, and there has been no government police in this city since 2057. No body. No case.
4. He went to the Westwood chapterhouse himself and asked. They were helpful: meals, tiers, and a roster line that says survey, casual and names nobody. So he pulled his own shift log for those weeks. A survey crew with instruments on a Westside street gets called in every time it stops, and one of those calls was cleared on a UCLA thaumaturgy institute field permit, with the crew's names logged by the responding car. His cousin's is one of them. The printout went on the crate.
5. The permit's contact is Dr. June Halloran. He called the institute and booked a meeting in his own name, upstairs on thirty-four, in an hour. He cannot keep it: a Knight Errant uniform cannot go up a fire road onto unowned ground on somebody else's paper. He asked them to keep it for him.

Then he went back to the counter.

What it pays#

Nothing, from the man asking.

15,000¥ (5,000 each) from the institute, on a university contract: itemized, invoiced and slow. She said she was embarrassed by the rate before anybody else could.

Scene 1: Thirty-four#

Dr. June Halloran, junior faculty at the UCLA thaumaturgy institute, on thirty-four, an hour after Tony Zamora went back to the counter, keeping an appointment booked in his name. She had asked to move it off campus. She climbed thirty-four floors with no risers in the shoes she came to work in, arrived out of breath, did not make anything of it, and opened her folder on somebody's crate.

What she started with#

1. She asked for Officer Zamora first. He had told her on the call that the people who could go up the canyon would not be him, so she stayed.
2. The equipment. Two years ago institute survey team 58-04 left three instrument cases, a rack of thirty core-sample tubes, a data drive and two field notebooks at a property above Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, and nobody from the university has been back. The parcel is unowned, uninsurable, and reached by a fire road. She wants it all back, and the drive most.
3. The offer. The crew go up as the institute's agents: a contract, the letter of authority with the manifest overleaf (handout 04, signed at the crate), the institute's insurance extended to them and to one vehicle, and 15,000¥ on a university invoice. The letter can name more people than it needs to.
4. The trade. Everything survey team 58-04 filed is theirs to read, the labor records included. She offered that part unasked.
5. Asked why it is not graduate students: after 2056 the university's insurer excluded the burned belt outright, fieldwork above the flood line needs a waiver from the risk office, and the risk office stopped granting them. Contractors are a different budget line and somebody else's liability.

Two years of survey data live on the institute's network rather than in her folder, and her office on campus is where to read them.

People#

Tony Zamora brought this one to the serving counter and is paying nobody. The man he is asking after is Tony Salas, who used to work the Melrose gate. Dr. June Halloran kept Tony's appointment on thirty-four and is the one paying, on a university invoice.

Tony the Crooked Cop

Knight Errant patrol, and the second Tony in that family. He will not fix a charge. He will be four blocks away.

Tony Salas

Eight years on the same studio gate. Notices everything, cares about very little, and can find you a badge if the conversation goes the right way.

Dr. June Halloran

UCLA thaumaturgy, junior faculty, no budget. Explains anything at length and signs the paperwork herself.