Once I had the cabinets open, Diamond Head leaped out to greet me. Their affairs occupied an entire cabinet and spilled over into the top drawer of a second. I’d thought I was going to be home free when I found the files. I’d forgotten the amount of paper a law office generated; it was the only way to show they were really working. When Mr. Contreras heard me cursing, he came in to see what was wrong. He clucked sympathetically, but didn’t feel able to help. Anyway, he had to man the lookout post.

I skimmed through the material in the first drawer. It dealt with the conditions surrounding Paragon’s sale of Diamond Head. Paragon had bought a helicopter manufacturer, Central States Aviation, Inc.; the Justice Department had ruled that they needed to divest themselves of Diamond Head as a condition of the acquisition. That explained why they got rid of the little engine company, something that had been troubling me.

An enormous stack of documents detailed a consent decree between Paragon and Diamond Head. I hovered over them, tempted to read them closely, but I needed to get to material that might explain terms of a settlement between Diamond Head and Eddie Mohr. Carefully keeping everything in its original order I put that stack on the floor next to me and turned to the next drawer.

Here I found the documents dealing with the bond issue enabling Jason Felitti to buy the engine maker. Skeletons from the Felitti family popped out at me in the form of letters from Peter Felitti to Dick. Jason had sold most of his shares in Amalgamated Portage years ago, apparently to finance his political ambitions in Du Page County. He’d used the remainder to acquire a stake in U.S. Metropolitan Bank and Trust.

When he wanted to sell that stake to help finance his acquisition of Diamond Head, Peter put his foot down. Let Jason use debt financing, he wrote to Dick. This was in 1988; Drexel was still riding high. It was relatively easy to find an investment banker willing to issue the debt that would enable Jason to make the purchase.

That same memo explained why Jason wanted Diamond Head to begin with, or at least gave Peter’s version of the case. Jason played golf with one of Paragon’s outside directors, a political crony who also sat on U.S. Met’s board. The crony knew Jason wanted to establish himself as a financial success separate from his brother—why not buy Diamond Head? Since Paragon had to unload it in sixty days, they would take any offer they could get.

All this was fascinating, but not illegal. Not even immoral. It was the next drawer that suddenly revealed what I was looking for.