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.

The vehicle gate on the Melrose lot, days, eight years. Salas checks the badge against the face and the face against the manner, and it is the manner that catches people, because a badge is easy and behaving like somebody who belongs is not.

He is not stupid and he is not fooled easily. He is bored, and eight years of it have made him lazy in the way that matters: he still sees the thing that does not fit, and he has stopped being the person whose problem it is. A badge that reads wrong gets a second look and then a shrug.

So he is a door rather than a wall. He will not take small money from a stranger, because a stranger is a risk with nothing behind it. What moves him is somebody arriving with a name he recognizes, an afternoon that goes easier if he helps, or a favor he can call in later. The crew got one of their own badged in as temporary security by talking to him. Not a bribe: a conversation.

He also knows Johnny Shoe Shiner, not well and not as business: the same thin end of what is left of the Mafia in this city, two men who turn up at the same funerals and are owed favors by the same handful of people. Tony is not a member of anything. He is a gate guard whose family is on that list, which in this city is a connection rather than a career.

That is a door the crew already own and did not know about, because Vinnie's line on Johnny is "I got a guy" and Johnny's line on Tony would have been the same.

What the crew knows#

• The union hands behind him work the same way: hereditary crews, fourth twelve-hour day, sharply observant, and not inclined to help management. They know precisely who belongs.
• He has a list of vehicles he waves through without looking, and a caterer's van is on it.
• He will not leave the booth to check something. That is somebody else's job and he knows whose.
• He remembers faces for about a week, and vehicles for months.

Contact#