Andrew Gross - No way back

Table of Contents

Australia

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Canada

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United Kingdom

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United States

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My books always seem to start out as simply a story line and then grow into something far more personal. In this one, the transformation came about through the character of Lauritzia Velez, and the divulging of her tragic past. Lauritzia was loosely based on a newspaper editorial I came across about the travails of Edmond Demiraj, an Albanian immigrant who agreed to testify against a ruthless Albanian killer, who then suffered a bloody and terrible revenge enacted against him and his family. Cast aside by the U.S. government and denied asylum, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, where rightly, during the actual writing of this book, the wrong was righted, and Demiraj was finally granted asylum in the United States. Ive taken some liberties with his personal story and adapting it into Lauritzias. But to me it became an anthem of not only the innocent victims of narco-terror, but of the horrors of a worldwide criminal enterprise that is out of control.

Several published works were truly helpful in writing this book, and I name them with appreciation: To Die in Mexico, Dispatches from Inside the Drug War by John Gibler (City Lights Books, 2011); Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family by Charles Bowden (Simon & Schuster, 2003); The Kingpins by William Finnegan, published in The New Yorker Magazine, July 2, 2012; and Narco Americano by T. J. English, published in Playboy magazine. All the writings graphically portray the tragedies of drug violence in Mexico and our own countrys ambivalent policies that have not curtailed the problem.

Id also like to thank my dedicated team at William Morrow: Henry Ferris, Lynn Grady, Danielle Barrett, Cole Hager, and Liate Stehlik, along with Julia Wisdom in the U.K., not only for their wisdom in improving what is between the covers, but for their commitment and energies in advancing this, and all my books, to market. And to Roy Grossman for his perception in the early drafts. And to Simon Lipskar and Joe Volpe at Writers House for continuing to make me feel like the most important person in the room.

And to my wife, Lynn, who daily makes me feel like the most important person in the room, though I am usually the only one in it.

Buy the ebook here

Buy the ebook here

If a body is just a body, who will step forward to ask whysomeone is killed and who killed them? If a body hasno name or no history, then who will demand justice?

A grieving mother of a victim
of Mexicos drug wars

He was handsome.

Not that I was really checking anyone out, or that I even looked at guys in that way anymoremarried going on ten years now, and Neil, my youngest, my stepson actually, just off to college. I glanced away, pretending I hadnt even noticed him. Especially in a bar by myself, no matter how stylish this one was. But in truth I guess I had. Noticed him. Just a little. Out of the corner of my eye

Longish black hair and kind of dark, smoky eyes. A white V-neck T-shirt under a stylish blazer. Late thirties maybe, around my age, but seemed younger. I wouldve chalked him up as being just a shade too cooltoo cool for my type anywayif it wasnt that something about him just seemed, I dont know natural. He sat down a few seats from me at the bar and ordered a Belvedere on the rocks, never looking my way. His watch was a rose-gold chronometer and looked expensive. When he finally did turn my way, shifting his stool to listen to the jazz pianist, his smile was pleasant, not too forward, just enough to acknowledge that there were three empty seats between us, and seemed to say nothing more than How are you tonight?

Actually the guy was pretty damn hot!

Truth was, it had been years since Id been at a bar by myself at night, other than maybe waiting for a girlfriend to come back from the ladies room as part of a gals night out. And the only reason I even happened to be here was that Id been in the city all day at this self-publishing seminar, a day after Dave and I had about the biggest fight of our married lives. Which had started out as nothing, of course, as these things usually did: whether or not you had to salt the steaks so heavilytwice, in factbefore putting them on the grillhe having read about it in Food & Wine magazine or somethingwhich somehow managed to morph into how I felt he was always spoiling the kids, who were from Daves first marriage: Amy, who was in Barcelona on her junior year abroad, and Neil, who had taken his car with him as a freshman up at Bates. Which was actually all just a kind of code, I now realized, for some issues I had with his ex-wife, Joanie. How I felt she was always belittling me; always putting out there that she was the kids mother, even though Id pretty much raised them since they were in grade school, and how I always felt Dave never fully supported me on this.

She is their mother! Dave said, pushing away from the table. Maybe you should just butt out on this, Wendy. Maybe you just should.

Then we both said some things Im sure we regretted.

The rest of the night we barely exchanged a wordDave shutting himself in the TV room with a hockey game, and me hiding out in the bedroom with my book. In the morning he was in his car at the crack of dawn, and I had my seminar in New York. We hadnt spoken a word all day, which was rare, so I asked my buddy Pam to meet me for a drink and maybe something to eat, just to talk it all through before heading home.

Home was about the last place I wanted to be right now.

And here it was, ten after seven, and Pam was texting me that she was running twenty min late: the usual kid crisismeaning Steve, her hedge-fund-honcho husband, still hadnt left the office as promised, and her nanny was with April at dance practice

And me, at the Hotel Kitano bar, a couple of blocks from Grand Central. Taking in the last, relaxing sips of a Patrn Gold margaritaanother thing I rarely did!one eye on the TV screen above me, which had a muted baseball game or something on, the other doing its best to avoid the eye of Mr. Cutie at the end of the bar. Maybe not looking my 100 percent, knockout