I tried to ask Geise, of Griffin Industries, about the San Antonio case, but he said he wasn't familiar with it. He had a few harsh words for grease thieves, however. "We call them in the industry 'grease bandits.' In many cases we'll have a lock on the container. They can take bolt cutters and they just empty the grease," he said, making the case that it's not just a matter of who picks up the grease first, but a case of stealing grease that belongs to Griffin. "We're going to protect our business interests."

"Wherever you get a business entity you'll get a smaller entity to defraud that entity," he said. "These would be guys who steal hubcaps; they're probably at your lower echelons of sophistication and other options."

Is there really that much money in grease nowadays? I asked. It depends. "A large franchisee like a McDonald's owner who has 10 to 12 restaurants, it could be more than $10,000 a year," he estimated.

Are there restaurants that aren't greasy enough to bother with? "Yes. If there wasn't several hundred pounds of product being produced a month it wouldn't be cost-effective," Geise said.

Everett Henley is another of Jaworski's clients who's had his problems with Griffin Industries. A former Houston police officer, he had a medium-size rendering business on the side, providing restaurants with containers and sending drivers out to service them on a regular basis. "My wife's family's been in it for probably three generations," Henley told me. "I had a complete rendering business. I bought it, rendered it and sold it to brokers overseas."

According to Henley, he was giving companies like Griffin too much competition. "When I took Church's away from them they went ballistic."

He was charged with two counts of grease theft and convicted on one of them. "I'll tell you the truth. I didn't steal a thing."

"They sued me under the RICO Act; they tried to get three grand jury indictments against me," Henley says. "The grand jury started laughing. They said, 'We'll see flying saucers outside our window before we'll see this with grease.'"

Henley had to leave the police force, and also left the grease business. "They got a $4.1 million judgment against me," he says. "I just got tired of paying attorneys' fees, tired of being tired. They succeeded," he says. "They basically forced me out."

Grease rivalry is not exclusive to Texas. A 1996 Wall Street Journal story by Thomas Petzinger Jr. datelined St. George, S.C., described the difficulties of Dausey By-Products, a fledgling grease company operated by father and son George and Tres Dausey.

Dausey By-Products was stepping on the toes of Carolina By-Products, a $100 million-a-year business. The two companies battled for the right to collect the grease in two locations of a new Carolina ribs chain, Sticky Fingers. Dausey originally had the deal, but CBP offered to pay a bonus of $500. This was for the privilege of picking up about $30 worth of grease a month at each location. Sticky Fingers turned it down in the name of supporting local business. CBP offered $1,500. Sticky Fingers said it would not be bought. CBP offered $5,000. Sticky Fingers took the deal.

Tres Dausey noticed a car following him as he made his rounds in the Dausey By-Products truck -- it turned out to be a CBP employee. CBP president David Evans told the Journal that the bonuses weren't so out of line, and that CBP was as free to tail the Dauseys as the Dauseys were to tail CBP drivers. "We will protect our route structure," he said.

But, the Journal reported, the Dauseys provided better service than CBP, paying more regularly and picking up grease before the containers got ugly. More customers turned down the bonuses than took them. The moral, the Journal reported, is: "Cash wins business, but service keeps it."

Since then, CBP has been bought out by Valley Proteins. Sticky Fingers is thriving. "They are doing quite well for themselves," Tres Dausey says. "They just opened up a new store and we have got that new store. We have kind of split the account."

These days neither competition nor grease theft is a problem for Dausey By-Products. "To tell you the truth I don't see why anyone would want to get in the business," Tres Dausey says. The family has perspective on the market. "My dad's been in the business I can't tell you how many years long." In the 1960s George Dausey started Savannah Tallow, and sold his first load of grease for 4 cents a pound. "Right now the market for our finished product is the lowest it's been in 30 to 35 years," Tres Dausey says.

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When is a grease thief not a grease thief? If a restaurant manager claims that grease was stolen, when he really sold it from the side door, that's not grease theft, that's grease fraud, isn't it?

Sometimes it's just wholesome free-market competition. "It's not theft. It's just a company trying to corner the grease market," Jaworski told me. (I like a lawyer whose clients are all innocent. Like Perry Mason.)

But Everett Henley reassured me that grease theft exists. "There are thieves out there," says Henley. "There is some that goes on, but not like they say it is."

I now know that if soy and palm oil production falters, a legion of grease thieves will spring into action. I shall watch the international vegetable oil markets with a keen eye, while penning my screenplay with the other.

The more I thought about it, the more potential the concept had. In the course of my research I had heard rumors of fierce grease competition leading to grease toughs tossing rival grease collectors into grease receptacles, closing the lid and threatening to shoot. Fabulous drama! I saw myself (played by Jackie Chan -- I'm told the resemblance is remarkable) catapulting out of a grease container to repulse an army of grease foes, intent on taking over my tiny grease business, staffed by a motley group of last chancers and inner-city teens.

I am ready for my closeup.

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