Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her heels is the house detective, who's come to check on the commotion in Room 303.

Reasoning that nobody knows all four of them besides the desk clerk, Teddy Spaghetti, the two detectives haul Teddy upstairs, where he confesses to the murder. Since Wayne, Peters, and Olivia all have careers to protect, the house detective agrees to keep their names out of it. It's all very simple - much too simple. As he looks into the murder, Toby finds that powerful people want to stop him from learning what really happened while he was sleeping in Room 303.