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Reconstructing "The Treatment" [06/30/03]

As the story opens, Barry the industrious ant con entrepreneur feels the need for a vacation from his activities around the western hemisphere and put the finishing touches on his morceau accablant. The Problem: to enable this, he must find someone to take over holding all of his current non-finalized and unknotted threads.

A standard issue bank robber, Jack E. Reno, meets this unusual confidence man who convinces him to become a phony librarian in a small southern town. Reasons for this: "Dr." Barry Tinker, the con man, has been nurturing this whole town set-up along over many years, concerning himself, like a garden fanatic with prize rose bushes he lovingly coaxes, over many years; scouring the press, and radio, local to this specific small town area. He intends to use this isolated -- but moneyed -- backwater within a web of larceny in the capacity of a far-removed cooling-off center, think tank, and covert, ex-convict un-rehab information and "Job" "referral" and general center of operations. He needs someone who is a "Johnson", a reliable -- within the family of criminality -- person who won't either get into trouble himself -- attracting attention in the process -- or go wrong on the arrangements and uncover, accidentally or intentionally, too much information.

The bank robber has found success with impunity, thus far. He also has a girlfriend (I see _____ here). She wants them to settle down a bit more. There is a proposed arrangement among the three that becomes a scenario mix mash whereby she is to be set up as an assistant to the assistant librarian in the town. This is primarily because neither of the guys, after some discussion, figure they can risk a loose canon rolling around town with nothing to do. Especially her.

The town's assistant librarian is named Phoebe Dieterich. She's unhappy about the new girl coming in, but complaining is not her way. Her instinct properly shelves that which is to be shelved. Her other (2 of 2) instincts is, however -- outside and inside -- her job: giving out information.

The town's name is Pointville, small but multiple-regional- payroll-fed-involved. The Pointville Bank shares a wall with the library's stacks. As things have developed now the con man is out of the picture for a time, but only after detailed instructions are given to Reno; and some whittled down version of the same but more vague or downright misleading, as needed, picture to the girlfriend. It is rehearsed and re-rehearsed until Dr. Barry Tinker feels nothing can possibly go wrong. Jack Reno is never short of bulletins about the bank because Mrs. Dieterich is married to the president of the bank, Conrad Dieterich, and she often -- without her husband's knowledge, gives out information about bank business freely and, of course, accurately. This, partly out of a false feeling of safety, engendered by her place of employment; but mostly due to instinct #2 of 2.

Clarence Dell, an habitué of Pointville Public Library, is employed at the bank next door. To his self-credit, and he feels strongly about this, he has experienced a long list of personal, nearly verifiable, UFO sightings, and is an avid reader of Charles Fort, Edgar Cayce, Coast-to- Coast radio programming, and all the rest. He does a lot of his own "research" on Theoretical UFOlogy at the library on weekends. At some point around in about this time Jack E. Reno decides they've got too much of a good thing, sans Dr. Tinker, and he start's "planning" to take down the wall, remove a very large state and federal payroll at the apprpriate time, and get Phoebe -- who has become irritatingly (to him) rural out of small town America -- then exit suddenly, speaking strictly in one-way terms and head for some place just south of (ergo: "Jack E.") Rio.

Reno tells Dell, to create an orienting response in him, that (his always imminently available) aliens are in fact arriving soon; manipulating him into believing, within an improvised Platonic-esque dialogue, that he, Clarence, has figured out what nobody else ever did: They are coming after the human vital economic cash. They arrange together to do their part to covertly, (because who can be trusted?), save planet Earth in an heroic act. Reno and Dell begin arranging to "hide" all of the bank's payrolls in the hills outside of town one night soon, safely away from the hideous invading armada.

N.B.:

On or about June 15, 1988, during the process of determining if an actress (known to SAG
personnel with whom I subsequently spoke) who called herself Stacy, whom I first became aware of
while at a restaurant called Fellini's, on Melrose, I lent a copy of this property to said actress.
At that time I was living at 450 W. Doran in Glendale. This was the locus where the property changed
hands. This property was never returned, in fact stolen would be the correct usage. Perp looked quite
like, for orientation of legal bounties, the actress with Star Trek, Voyager, Roxann Dawson. Efforts to
retrieve this property resulted in my being assaulted at Fellini's. A copy of this same treatment was
mailed, for verification of previous possession, to Brian J. Burt of New York City. A substantial reward
is now offered to anyone with information that leads directly and swiftly to an arrest and conviction for
theft of intellectual property and assault.

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