The Chateau Marmont is maybe the last hotel in the Western hemisphere to still use keys. Real keys, the metal kind, the kind where you want to break into somewhere you make a copy in a bar of soap or something, or, what the hell, you just pick the bastard. There was likely a master key somewhere in his bag, but it wasn't worth looking. Deets stuck in the picks and thought about a late-nite breakfast at Canter's when he got finished.

A fucking blind coon piano player could have done it, so he couldn't feel particularly proud. Malo could kiss his pale and dimpled ass, Deets was going to treat himself when he went in. It took him less than five seconds with his mind primarily on a bagel with cream cheese, lox, and onions.

This of course is why he got the Big Bucks.

He was a fucking super hero, no question about it.

Captain Midnight went into the dark hotel cottage. He closed the door, took a small flashlight from the messenger bag he carried, shined it around while he hummed 'New York, New York'. What he was looking for, the laptop briefcase, was over near the desk. He zipped it open, took out the computer, sat it on the desk. Checked his watch. He was okay on time.

He turned on the computer, waited for it to boot. It asked for the password. Fuck that, I laugh in the face of passwords. He got out the notebook file containing a couple of dozen of his very own special startup disks. He selected the right one, slid it into the computer, rebooted. It shut down, hummed, woke up. Now, rather than some asshole start-up program, it circumvented all that crap and shot him directly into the system files, and from that a list of every file on the computer.

'Hurrah,' said Captain Midnight. 'I am clearly a god among common mortals.'

Captain Midnight searched the computer screen desktop, leisurely glanced through a few files. It didn't take long to find it. He plugged in a flash drive, downloaded the file onto it. It took just a few seconds and he was done. He ran a quick file check to see if there was anything he'd missed.

'This is just too easy. Where is the challenge, I ask you? Where is the poetry?'

Checked his watch again. Still good.

'Let's have a little fun then, shall we?'

He took out a large Snickers bar, unwrapped it, chewed on it while he leisurely browsed through files.

'Boring ... boring ... boring ... Aha!'

Photos. Captain Midnight opened the file. Some old family shit, lots of photos of some bozo with curly blond hair and a beard. Captain Midnight thought he remembered the guy from somewhere. Then Captain Midnight found some photos of nude women. He brightened up.

'Oh, you naughty boy.'

Every guy had them on his computer somewhere. This was really the best part of the job. Captain Midnight looked through them, pleased.

He copied these too.

When he was sure he'd gotten everything of interest, he shut down the computer, closed the case again, and put it back in the briefcase. He double-checked around the room to see if he'd forgotten anything.

Nope.

He sighed. Now was the best part of the job. It was the only reason he did it. Everything else was just fucking dull. One of the perils of being a genius.

He went around the room and touched things. Opened drawers, closets, suitcases. Touched pants shirts jackets hanging. Touched folded underwear, opened a cotton hotel laundry bag and moved his hand around in the contents of that. Went into the bathroom, touched the toothbrush, the electric razor, the still damp towels, the toilet seat. Opened the little Dopp kit and handled the bottle of pills, the condoms, sniffed the bottle of cologne.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Went back into the bedroom, took a brand-new folded white shirt from a drawer. Pulled out the pins, the cardboard, unfolded the shirt, and laid it on the bed. He unzipped his fly, pulled out his dick, and whacked off onto it. Just a few hard quick strokes and bam, he was done.

Ahh god, ahh god ...

Stood there for a few moments in bliss, weak, the room spinning a little.

Finally tucked away his pizzle. Carefully refolded, repinned the shirt exactly the way he'd found it. Put it back in the drawer.

Then said to the room,

'Congratulations, you have just been fucked by Captain Midnight. Heigh-ho, Silver, and away.'

And was gone.

Jerry Margashack stood in the dining room of the Bonaventure Hotel with a hundred or so people he hated. He hardly knew any of them, but the ones he did know he despised, and he figured the odds were in his favor concerning the rest. He was more than a little drunk, but this wasn't unusual. The room was full of film distributors, sucking-up critics, and the other industry types who always come to these things. There'd been a private screening downtown and they'd all adjourned here to swill the producer's booze, score dope, and try to get laid.

The film, Jerry's film, the one he'd (in theory anyway) written and directed, had done great in the advance screenings with very little tweaking. The people who did the numbers were happy. They'd nailed domestic and European distribution already – that's where the bread came from to make the film in the first place, they'd pre-sold the shit out of it – and now it was a matter of trying to conquer the rest of the world. This explained why geeky looking people from around the world were allowed this evening to come up and tell him how brilliant he was. Which was the last thing he wanted to hear.

There was a blonde halfway across the room trying to make eye contact with him.

'That bimbo almost wearing the red dress is going to get a hernia if you don't respond,' Annie Michaels said to him.

Annie was his agent. He hated her too but, like most everybody else in this hellhole, she had him by the balls in one way or another.

'I hate her,' Jerry said.

'You know her?'

'Nope.'

'You hate everybody.'

'My experience is that it's better to start out that way,' he said, slugging back some of the champagne in his glass. 'That way there's nowhere to go but up.'

'So what do you think,' she said to him. 'You should be happy.'

'Fucking overjoyed.'

'Everybody loved it. You're a hit.'

'I don't want to be a hit,' he said, taking another drink. 'I want to be the guy who made a good film, which this fucking well isn't, by the way.'

She grabbed him by the arm, led him off to the edge of the crowd out of earshot.

'Do not do this,' she said. 'Not now, not here. You want to whine and act like a fucking child, fine, go back to the hotel and get shitfaced again and tell your woes to the toilet.'

'It's a piece of shit, Annie. It's not my film. Not after Frank had the fucking second-unit director – an imbecile, by the way, whose idea of dramatic resolution is to cut somebody's head in half with a chainsaw – reshoot those desert scenes without telling me about it. Then the bastard recuts it with a fucking Cuisinart. I'd take my fucking name off the thing if I thought I'd still get my money. Where is the rest of my fucking money, by the way?'

A guy who looked oily enough to be a second-string studio exec came up, took Jerry's hand.

'Congratulations, man!' said the exec. 'Great flick. It must feel good. Long time getting recognized by the Establishment, right?'

'Sure,' said Jerry. 'You bet.'

'This has got Oscar written all over it,' the...