A New York Operator's Trail of Blood, Bankruptcy, and Brazilian
Diamonds  The entrance to the 110-year-old brownstone at 2 East
12th Street, two blocks south of Union Square, isn't
particularly dramatic or imposing. You have to step down to
reach the front door. There's no doorman to wait on you.
Looking at it, you wouldn't imagine that the basement apartment
there was at the center of a bitter court fight that ranged from
the West 47th Street Diamond District deep into the Amazon
jungle, and involved smuggling, bribery, corruption, a $20
billion corporation, Stone Age Indians, and a massacre.
Longtime New York diamond merchant Marco Kalisch and his wife,
Mayra, owned the apartment, having lovingly restored it after
combining it with the two adjacent units. They had a nice
life—at least until Kalisch and his Brazilian partners tried to
corner the market on rough diamonds being illegally mined on an
Indian reservation in the Amazon.  "The story told by Marco
[Kalisch] could be the basis of a screenplay," a U