Thief

Thief

Series
UnFictional
Original Broadcast Date
9/25/2012
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Narrative Monologue, 25 minutes
Preceded by:	Dreamers
Followed by:	Old Man

One afternoon, when I was 8 years old, I went into my parents’ bedroom and found a coin in the top drawer of their bureau.

Thief is a radio show produced by Joe Frank which aired on KCRW's series UnFictional. It was originally broadcast September 25, 2012

Synopsis

2:00: When he was eight, Joe began stealing stuff from his parents. When they were out he'd go into their room, rummage around, take stuff he liked.

3:40: One afternoon he found photographs of himself as an infant with people he did not recognize. He wanted to ask his parents about them but didn't want to reveal he was a thief.

5:10: His own stuff started disappearing. The house became bare.

7:50: The parents put up surveillance cameras, hired a guard. Joe barricaded his door.

8:30: Joe cracked, asked about the pictures. His parents didn't know who those people were either.

10:50: They made up.

11:50: His parents took in a Romanian exchange student, Angelisa (sp?). Joe fell in love with her.

13:40 While rummaging in her room Joe found a love letter from his father to Angelisa. He put it in his mother's purse. He ran away from home for a day, met a clown whose trick flower squirted water in his eye.

16:30: The next evening, when his father returned from work, he found the house empty of everything except his clothes, their photo albums in ashes in the fireplace.

17:40: He walked into town the next day, found the bank account cleaned out, their house foreclosed. When he walked back home the house had disappeared, homeless people were living on the lot.

18:50: Joe returned. He and his father went out to the highway, hitchhiked. A truck, trying to stop for them, jack-knifed, killing his father. Joe found the driver unconscious, dragged him out of the cab, drove off with the truck.

19:40: Joe describes the lavish party Alberto Muñoz threw for his birthday last week, 'beautiful young showgirls, overweight powerful businessmen, and children with gift bags of sweets and toys. At the front gate, footmen in liveried uniforms parked cars while Nubian slave girls, holding high silver and gold inlaid trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne, circulated through the festive crowd.'

20:50: Muñoz gives Joe 'a small lake in which model ships engaged in battles firing miniature cannons to replicate the famous naval campaigns in history.'

21:40: Muñoz leads a drug cartel; all his opponents die violently.

22:50: The police arrest Joe and other members of the cartel, put them in 'a palatial prison with huge bedrooms and marble bathrooms, an Olympic-sized heated swimming pool, a brothel featuring the most gorgeous schoolgirls.' They escape with the warden's help, go into exile on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

24:30: Superman was Joe's hero when he was six. He asked questions about him of his parents, who treated them as frivolous, which miffed Joe.

Legacy Synopsis

Multiple thefts lead to paranoia in a suburban family, love dies and the crime rate goes up.

Music

• "Down and Out" - Boozoo Bajou (from Satta, 2001) | YouTube [Intro]

• "Night Over Manaus" - Boozoo Bajou (from Satta, 2001) | YouTube [12:42]

Additional credits

• Mixed by Ray Guarna
• Music recorded by Kenny Lyon
• featuring James Harrah on guitar.
• Special thanks to Michal Story

Miscellanea

A portion of this program originally was published in the New York Times "Anxiety Series"

External links

• Thief streaming audio at KCRW