Still, soy farmers could have a disastrous year. Simultaneously Malaysia could convert from palm oil production to chardonnay grape vineyards. Grease prices could soar!

And even if they didn't, it could be one of those movies about the Last Caper. I see Paul Newman as the seasoned grease thief, coming out of retirement to do one last job and coaching me, the talented young rookie. Rene Russo would be great in the part, and not just because of the physical resemblance.

The falling price of grease helped explain something that had puzzled me. I had seen a story about two guys driving across the U.S. in a van with a diesel engine converted to burn cooking oil. The modifications were done by Justin Carven (who just got a degree in appropriate technology development) and Skip Wrightson. They had barreled across the nation, begging used cooking oil from burger joints, filtering it and using it to fuel their jaunt at 25-27 miles per gallon. I had wondered how they were getting free grease if it was such a valuable commodity.

Their trip is chronicled on their exciting Web site. Diary highlights include the July 13 dilemma in Utica, N.Y., between the watery grease from Lotta Burger and the thick grease from Burger King; Aug. 19's plaintive "The grease we picked up in Utah the other day is quite rancid and seems to be clogging the filter"; and their July 29 visit to an Oregon renewable energy fair in which the grease car was all but forcibly fitted with solar panels although "Justin isn't really a solar advocate."

I called Carven, who said the project started to design a system to power vehicles and generators in the third world, where vegetable oil is cheaper than petroleum. "In this country vegetable oil is so expensive, so I redesigned it to run on used cooking oil," Carven said. They'd start the grease car with diesel fuel to warm up the cooking oil, and then switch to burning the cooking oil.

Were they ever taken for grease thieves? Apparently not. For the most part people were delighted to give them a few pounds of used cooking oil. Their only problem was in Montana, where state law mandates that restaurants sell their used grease to recyclers. No one would give them so much as a gallon. They finally went to a recycler over the border in Idaho, who happily topped off the grease car and discussed the hopeful future of biodiesel fuels with them.

"They don't have a real great market for their stuff except hog feed," said Carven. Was it a smelly place? "Oh yeah, it was one of the more foul places I've ever been." (Note to producer: No Smell-O-Rama.)

Grease recycling policies varied in different parts of the country, Carven said. "In some parts of the country commodities brokers actually pay for the oil. In most of the country companies actually have to pay waste removal companies to come and take it away." The Idaho plant, for example, paid restaurants "less than $10 a month to secure the stock of oil."

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So now I knew all about grease, grease prices and fun projects to do with grease, but I needed to know more about grease theft.

I called the grease lawyer, Jaworski, an affable guy who's handled dozens of grease cases in addition to other criminal cases, divorce work and deceptive trade cases. (I used to live in east Texas, and formed the impression that the large and diverse state of Texas is particularly blessed in causes for legal action.) I want him in my corner if I'm arrested for grease theft.

I asked him about the 1990 case that got him started in grease law. According to Jaworski, "It was an obvious setup." A grease company, convinced that grease was disappearing from containers at restaurants with which it had contracts, staked out a Popeye's Fried Chicken lot.

Jaworski's clients, small-time grease collectors, had left a business card at the restaurant saying that they picked up grease. "Somebody called them and said go pick up the grease, the company hadn't picked it up. So they said OK, they came out, they knocked on the door and nobody answered." It was early in the morning, since grease pickups are usually made when the restaurants are closed. They took the grease. "They taped a receipt on the back of the door. We found out later that these two guys who worked for the rival company came and took the receipt," relates Jaworski. "And of course the manager of the store said, 'We never called you.'"

Jaworski obtained an acquittal for his clients and then sued for malicious prosecution, winning a judgment of $45,000.

Jaworski says it often happened that the manager of a store that had a contract with a grease company might sell grease on the side to another grease dealer. (This was especially likely to happen if the contracted grease company was late picking up the grease and things were starting to get overly oily or smelly out back.) "The manager of the store would pick up $15-$20 a week selling the grease," Jaworski says. "It was only 20 bucks but it amounted to lunch money. A fringe benefit." Then they'd often tell the contracted grease company that the grease had been stolen.

"In reality they didn't own the grease because they didn't pay for it till the end of the month," Jaworski argues, an argument that didn't always fly in court.

Jaworski says some of the grease companies hired off-duty or retired police officers to stake out grease-collecting sites, and paid them "$100 a pop for every person they busted. They would put guns to their heads. They were real vigilantes. So these little guys were pleading guilty. After two thefts, the third theft becomes a felony and the little guy would be pressured into testifying," Jaworski says.

"People in the grease business are kind of the equivalent of the people in New Jersey who are in the trash business," he says.

I asked a question that had been preying on my mind: Are there female grease thieves? "Yeah, there's one that I know of and she can lift 55-gallon barrels," Jaworski says. (My competition is strong! It will be no squalling catfight when we meet! Or wait -- maybe she will be my mentor. She will teach me the ropes of grease. Maestra!)

I wondered if the grease companies ever had a hard time getting the law interested in their woes. "Exactly," says Jaworski. "I had a lot of jurors, when we were doing the voir dire, say, 'Why are you wasting our time with these cases?'"

Soon Jaworski had handled over 100 grease cases, more than a dozen of which went to trial. In one local jurisdiction, Harris County, the district attorney didn't want to prosecute any more grease cases, Jaworski says. "A lot of them got dismissed. He was seeing a lot of the same cops in the same busts over and over again, so he basically wasn't accepting cases that were grease cases."

Jaworski handled the 1998 San Antonio case that had alerted me to the grease crime situation, and to my new destiny. In this case, Griffin Industries, one of the nation's largest grease companies, had hired a former Texas Ranger to catch grease thieves. It also hired "a former grease thief, David Mitchell" as an informant. The company loaded Mitchell's tanker with 11,350 pounds of grease from its Bastrop, Texas, plant and arranged for him to sell it to employees of another company, Imperial Grease Service.

The employees were covertly videotaped buying the grease, which Mitchell told them was stolen, and charged with felony theft.

Jaworski argued that these were low-level employees following instructions from their managers to buy the grease. "They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," he told the San Antonio Express-News.

He also charged that Griffin's real concern was not stopping theft, but putting competitors out of business.

Through civil discovery, Jaworski obtained a copy of what he characterizes as a Griffin Industries plan for driving the competition out of business, which he introduced into evidence in more than one grease case.

In the 1998 case that had attracted my interest, however, two of Jaworski's three clients were convicted and received sentences of probation and community service.

Grease law has simmered down since the mid-'90s, perhaps because the price of grease has fallen. Jaworski has no grease cases at present.

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