First and foremost, Innocenti made sure to protect his only son. His family name could only harm his son's new life, so Don Innocenti gave him a new name: MacLean, which he pronounced ‘Mac-Lane.’ For Maximilian MacLean, no numbers, no prostitution, no drugs, no rackets, no violence, no murders. For him the finest schools on the East Coast and England, the Church, ROTC, summers in Europe. For him, charity work to learn humility. For him, the gift of a legitimate business when he turned twenty-one: an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles at the very onset of the Italian food craze.
Until then, MacLean's life had been choreographed by his father. Soon thereafter, his father died. He was on his own. Maximilian became "Max." Although he knew more about history, classics, and table manners than about money and business, his father's blood flowed in his veins. As ordained by his father, Max forever gave up his family share in illegal activities. Yet he maintained channels of communication with the other families in the United States and the rest of the world. He did legal favors for the other families and they did favors for him. As Max MacLean grew wealthy, he gave and accepted big favors. For this reason, and because he left his slice of the Cosa Nostra pie to the other families, they were pleased to oblige him.
As the Italian food craze intensified, with the patronage of his father's friends, Max's Italian restaurant became two, then three. He opened restaurants in other cities, other countries. Then came a café chain. Product licensing. Frozen foods. Import-export. Food transportation—domestic, then international. A local, national, international cooking school. A magazine. Websites. A television food channel. A gourmet spa. Then a hotel around it. Then several hotels. An Atlantic City casino—a legitimate one. Ever-increasing real estate holdings. Finally, his diversified food products company devoured others to dominate the market. In twenty years, MacLean had built a fortune. At forty, he married for the first time, to Claire Des Eaux, a beautiful and young French marine biologist. He shielded her from even the slightest knowledge of his past, and kept all his old family connections at bay. They looked forward to children.
Svelte and tall, with a patrician aquiline nose, an accent halfway between the East Coast and England reminiscent of Cary Grant's, and a quiet, self-assured manner, MacLean's appearance was more that of a senior European banker, a managing partner of an international law firm, or an Ivy League university president than the son of a mafia don. After a few moments of sartorial reflection in his warehouse-sized dressing closet, MacLean selected a three-button, solid navy Brioni suit, a light blue Charvet French-cuffed shirt, a deep blue Etro tie, and black Gucci loafers with shiny silver buckles. He chose slightly eccentric red and blue–lacquered gold cufflinks in the form of bees—the symbol of Napoléon—and the subdued elegance of a roman-numeraled Chaumet Aquila watch. He began to dress. Soon his appearance was transformed into that of a Hollywood star.
Satisfied with his regal appearance in the stand-up mirror, MacLean turned and descended the brushed aluminum and frosted glass spiral staircase, trailing the 1930s scent of Acqua di Parma. Dan Wenzel, his lawyer, paced in the vast entry hall below, puffing on his tenth cigarette of the morning.
“Ah, Dan.” He consulted his watch. “Always early.”
They shook hands. “Morning, Max. Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”
“Good God, man. You sound as though I'm doing you a favor. You're the one with the diamonds. Come on up.”
They ascended to the second floor, walked down a black marble hallway, and emerged in an antique Italianate room with a shiny marble bar. Floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows provided a panoramic vista of Beverly Hills below.
MacLean walked behind the bar, leaned back against a rack of dusty claret bottles. “So, Dan. What's all this excitement about diamonds?”
Wenzel, curly haired, large but not muscular, propped himself up on a black leather barstool, lit another John Player Special cigarette, and squinted in concentration behind his oval wire-rimmed glasses. “Here's the story. Two days ago I went to the South to finalize the leases on the restaurants in Tennessee and Mississippi. I could have sent an associate, but I needed the break.”
MacLean nodded.
Wenzel smiled. “Don't worry. I charged you the associate rate.”
“I don't doubt it.” As opposed to his father's lawyers, Wenzel was a straight arrow. His honesty was legendary in California's legal and business communities.
“I was flying around in a tiny twin engine jobbie, on my way from Texarkana to Little Rock. The plane developed a glitch, and the pilot landed at this tiny airstrip in Murfreesboro. Ever hear of the place?”
“Never.”
“It’s a one-stoplight town about a hundred miles south of Little Rock. About fifty miles from where Bill Clinton was born.” Wenzel exhaled a puff of smoke. “The pilot says it's going to be a couple of hours, so I head for the nearest restaurant. Hamburgers, chili. That type of thing.”
MacLean flinched. “I can imagine.” His lips tightened.
“So I sit down and order a burger. Have a beer and a smoke. Big blonde waitress with a beehive hairdo says there's a phone call for me. The pilot tells me it's going to take another couple of hours. Fuel line problem. I decide to watch some TV at this old bar next to the restaurant. It's dark, only one person in the place besides the bartender. An older guy in overalls, Theodore Osage. Pronounced it ‘Ah-sah-ghee’. He's a little trashed, but coherent. I order a beer. This bass fishing show comes on TV. Well, you know how I love fishing.”
MacLean wrinkled his nose. “Indeed.”
“Well it turns out this guy loves fishing too. We started talking. After a few more beers—man, could he drink—we're on a first-name basis. I ask him what he's doing all alone in this bar in the middle of the day. He tells me he's a farmer and the bank is foreclosing on his land. I asked him how much he owed. He says two thousand dollars. A lousy two thousand bucks, Max! So I give him some tips about what he can do to stall the foreclosure. He asks me if I want to see his place. Great for bass fishing, he says, jabbing me in the ribs. It's seven miles north on a river near this lake. I don't know why, but I'm completely taken by this old guy. Against all better judgment, I get into his truck and we drive up there.”
“You're nuts.”
“I know. I just had this urge. We bonded, I guess.”
“Bonding over a bass fishing show,” MacLean taunted.
“We get out there, and it's nothing like what I expected. It's gorgeous. A cabin. Some farm land. A kind of lake or pond. None of the rusting hulks of cars in the backyard type of stuff I had expected in the rural South. About a hundred acres total. I fell in love with the place.”
“And?”
“I offered Osage two thousand bucks for an option to buy the entire place, and he gets to keep living there.”
“Very civil of you. Now—”
“No, no. As it turns out, very civil of him. Here's where it gets interesting.” He leaned forward. “Osage was thrilled I put up the money, said he knew I was doing it to be nice and that it was great to see a young city slicker like me had enough values to care about old timers like him—his words exactly. So I cut him a check. I was going to draft a contract, but he said his word was his bond. You know the type.”
“I thought we were extinct.”
Wenzel agreed with a nod. “Osage hands me an old survey done in the 1920s by a team of government geologists that included some of his land. Apparently, they concluded that the area contained a large diamond deposit.”
MacLean smiled. “Diamonds in Arkansas?”
“Osage's father was one of the geologists. He died in a car accident in 1932, a few years after mining stopped cold, supposedly after a visit by a South African diamond corporation. Osage thinks his father was killed because he knew the land had diamond deposits and refused to keep quiet. Later Osage found his father's copy of the geological report. He was terrified of the people who he thought killed his father so he never mined the land. Some random mining occurred nearby, bu
t in 1952, an area south of Osage's land was turned into a tourist attraction. In 1972, the land was purchased by the State of Arkansas. Today it's called the Crater of Diamonds State Park. Osage said he wanted me to know everything about the land since I had been so nice helping him out.”
“What about this park?”
“A tourist attraction. I contacted the park. Apparently you pay a fee to enter the property and can keep any diamonds you find. No machine tools allowed. Only about six hundred carats of small diamonds are found there each year.”
“Small potatoes.”
“I knew you'd say that. But look at these.” Wenzel reached into his pocket, let three small stones fall on the bar top.
MacLean leaned over, pushed them around with a manicured finger, picked one up, held it up to the bright halogen beam, then examined the other two. “Beautiful.” Each stone was the size of a coffee bean, uncut, but its glow announced that in the hands of an adept diamond cutter the stone would yield an attractive jewel. Perhaps two.
“Where did you get these diamonds?”
“Osage gave them to me after I cut him the check. They’re from his land. He showed me where.”
MacLean replaced the stone on the bar top. “But you don't own the land, just have an option to buy it later.”
“That's the great part. Osage will let us mine. Right now. That's why he gave me the geological report. Here's the deal, Max. You develop the mine. I do the legal work.” He extinguished the cigarette and smiled. “Merry Christmas, Gatsby.”
MacLean stared at his lawyer, again amazed at the man's loyalty. “You could have kept quiet, developed the mine for yourself.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I was in Arkansas on your dime. It would be unethical to keep this deal for myself.” He lit another cigarette. “Besides, I'm a lawyer, not a businessman.”
“As always, I'm amazed by your sense of ethics, but the legal work isn't enough. If we do this, you'll get a percentage of the profits.” Wenzel was about to protest, but MacLean held up his hand. “I insist.”
“Thanks,” Wenzel whispered, thinking of the glee of his greedy law partners, with whom his partnership agreement required he share such a profit—technically, a legal fee.
“What are we talking about, in carats?”
“About 250,000 carats a year. But remember, that's from a 1920s report, based on 1920s mining technology. With today's equipment, it's got to be way more.”
Far more than dollar signs, MacLean imagined the thousands of beautiful diamonds coming out of the Arkansas mine. “Did Osage give you a copy of the report?”
Wenzel removed a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket. “Right here. It's a photocopy of the copy Osage's father made.” The print was small, faded, but still legible. MacLean and Wenzel leaned over the photocopied report and read in silence. At times, it was difficult for the two laymen to understand the meaning of the geologic terminology. Intrusive peridotite. Volcanic breccia. Tuff and fine-grained breccia. The terms were Greek to them, but it was clear there were diamond deposits on Osage's land.
MacLean looked up. “You think it's legit? Not a con?”
“Believe me, I've thought about it. Ordinarily, there's no way I'd buy it. However,” he began to count off on his fingers, “when you consider the history of the area, the fact diamonds were mined there in the 1920s, the fact there's a state park next door that produces diamonds, the fact Osage showed me the report after—not before—I gave him the two thousand bucks, it seems to add up.”
MacLean stared at Wenzel for several moments, flashed a broad smile. “When do we start mining?”
4 CASE
Main Justice Building
Washington, D. C.
8:07 P.M.
That night Carlton found a slim file bucket marked U.S. v. Murfreesboro Mining Corporation, Raymond Mines, et al on his office chair.
Stalin’s diamond case.
He reclined in the brown cracked leather chair. Outside, thick gray clouds jockeyed in front of a pale winter moon. Carlton clicked on his battered green glass-and-brass lamp. Photocopies of statutes and cases, memo pads filled with handwritten questions for direct and cross-examination of witnesses, and scribbled notes on yellow stickies stared back at him from every nook and cranny of his desk, forcing him to face the fact Jarvik had destroyed the Global Steel case. His case.
The jerk.
Carlton cleared his desk of all paperwork related to Global Steel before turning his attention to the new file. He removed the manila folders from the bucket, each stamped by the file department to keep the file organized. Notes and Memoranda. Correspondence. Legal research. Background.
To Carlton, a diamond was a sparkling stone, necessary precursor to a couple’s engagement. He was surprised that his thoughts strayed to Erika and quickly forced them back on track. He still pined for the Global Steel case. Now that was an antitrust case. A huge conglomerate cornering the market on industrial steel, the raw material of the American industrial juggernaut.
But wishing would not bring Global Steel back, and he had a job to do. He selected the file marked ‘Background’ and read the U.S. Attorney Office’s interview of Jim Higgins, the man who had brought the case to light. Carlton sighed and started to read.
The Raymond Mines company was owned by the Raymonds, an elderly couple who lived near Murfreesboro, Arkansas. Their ten-year-old grandson fell in a ditch at the edge of their farm and found a strange stone in the mud, which he showed Raymond. Raymond compared the stone to pictures in a handbook on minerals and gems. According to the book, the stone was a diamond. Still in doubt, Raymond asked the advice of Jim Higgins, a local geologist, who confirmed that the stone was in fact a diamond. Raymond hired a few local men who dug several deep holes near the ditch where the stone had been found. The dirt was washed through a sieve and some garnets—diamond indicator stones—and then a few small diamonds were discovered. Reasoning that the diamonds had to have broken off of a main diamond deposit through erosion, Higgins recommended that borings be performed. One boring eventually led to the suspected diamondiferous kimberlite pipe. A solid citizen, Raymond easily obtained local mining permits and a line of credit from his bank. After three months, the operation began to produce approximately five hundred carats per month, with Higgins as a supervising partner. Almost all of the diamond roughs were industrial quality stones, mostly yellowish in color.
Four months after the mine’s opening, a man named Mr. Lester visited the Raymonds. Lester stated that he was a lawyer who represented the Murfreesboro Mining Corporation, a large mining concern out of Murfreesboro. Lester offered to purchase the Raymonds’ land, but the Raymonds refused because their farm had been in the family since before the Civil War. Lester then offered to purchase the Raymonds’ entire diamond production. The Raymonds again refused out of concern that Murfreesboro Mining Corporation would impose quantity and quality requirements on the mine. Finally, Lester offered to pay the Raymonds $3 million not to mine any diamonds. The Raymonds agreed, considering the proposal profitable and free from effort.
The Raymonds offered Higgins $1 million as a fee for discontinuing operations. Higgins did not like the offer. His long-term profit was greater than $1 million. And as the mine manager with a dozen employees working under him, he had found a renewed purpose in his career. But the Raymonds were adamant about closing the mine, which, after all, was on their land. Higgins called his son-in-law, an attorney in Little Rock, who informed him that the agreement between the Raymonds and the Murfreesboro Mining Corporation was probably illegal under federal antitrust laws.
Higgins informed the Raymonds. The Raymonds contacted Lester, who convinced them that the transaction was not illegal in any way. On that basis, the Raymonds refused to rescind their agreement with Murfreesboro Mining Corporation. Higgins threatened to litigate. Higgins’ son-in-law filed a complaint with the U.S. Attorney in Little Rock. The U.S. Attorney’s Office interviewed Higgins, but was overloaded and pushed the case up
to DOJ’s Antitrust Division in D.C., where the information filtered up to Gail Rothenberg, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust.
Carlton stared at his scant notes and sifted through the rest of the thin file. “That’s it?” He needed more information. He found a number in his electronic Rolodex, dialed.
“Josh Stein,” the familiar voice answered.
“Josh? Pat Carlton.”
“Patty boy! Long time no hear, buddy. What’s up at Justice?”
They had gone through law school together. Stein had opted for the government track directly, and had recently been ordained senior trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “I can’t stand the sandbox politics.”
“Welcome to government service. Listen, we should get together soon, but right now I’m swamped.”
“Sorry to catch you at a bad time. I was calling to see if you could dig up some background on a corporation.”
“No problemo.” Carlton heard him rummaging papers. “Shoot.”
After obtaining Stein’s assurance he would keep the conversation confidential, Carlton thumbnailed the few facts he knew about Murfreesboro Mining Corporation.
“Get back to you A-S-A-P.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
Carlton stared at his notes. There would be depositions, expert witnesses to interview, but it seemed rather cut and dry. He clicked off his brass desk lamp and was thrust into near total darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the dim glow from streetlights outside, he stumbled to find his scarf and wool overcoat on the hat rack. In the hall, he shoved the key in the lock under the old door handle and secured his little cave, hoping against reason it would keep Jarvik out, knowing such security was an illusion.
Patrick Carlton 01 - The Diamond Conspiracy Page 3