No Way Back: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  “Well, what do you know.” He chuckled. “Not a thing.”

  When I didn’t say anything again he just let his rough, calloused hand drift down my skin, until it found my belt, and he just kind of flicked his thumb against the edge of my jeans, three or four times, just to let me know it was there, all the while leering that creepy, I’m-in-control-here smile at me.

  I stayed frozen.

  I said, “I know how his daughter died. Mr. Lasser’s. I know she was killed by the Zeta drug cartel, who made it seem like it was a hit on two DEA agents. But I know she was the actual target there. I also know he was shipping guns to the Juarte cartel. For the U.S. government . . .”

  “Keep it going, sweetheart.” Clem or Earl smiled his gap-toothed smile. “I’m liking how you’re sounding now.”

  “I know there was a reporter who came to talk to him a couple of months back. His name was Kitchner. Who probably knew the same things too. And that whatever he was doing continued on up in the U.S. government.” He moved the gun straight into my face and put the muzzle against my forehead. “All I know is that it’s high enough that people are willing to kill to keep it a secret, which is exactly how this Kitchner died, by the hands of a government agent . . .”

  Suddenly I heard the sound of pebbles being crunched nearby. Boots walking on gravel.

  My head jerked to the side, my heart pounding so loudly, I couldn’t hear the sound of the river anymore.

  Lasser came into view.

  “You seem to know quite a lot, Ms. Gould,” he said, taking off his glasses. “So I guess my next question is . . . other than whether I should let Emmit here go to work on you for good . . . if you know all you say you do, just why the hell are you here?”

  Emmit. I pulled myself out of his grip. How did I miss that one? I looked at Lasser, knowing that what I said next would either save me or cost me my life.

  “I need to know why your daughter died.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Emmit, do me a favor and grab a smoke over there and let the two of us have a word.” Lasser nodded toward a spot about ten feet away. “You’ve been very persuasive, as usual.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lasser.” Emmit removed his hand with a kind of you’re-one-lucky-girl snicker and went over to a Jeep just out of earshot and leaned against the hood.

  “I could easily let him kill you, Ms. Gould, and maybe I still will. I might well be doing a lot of people a very large favor.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to regain my composure. “How did you know who I was?”

  “You think we’re just a bunch of cow chips out here? Me, I’m just a country businessman trying to live a private life. Privacy is very important to me. And I don’t like it when people stick their noses into things they shouldn’t be and scratch the scab off old wounds.”

  “You can be sure,” I said to him, “I’d rather be anywhere else in the world.”

  He chuckled and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a flashy lighter with a turquoise stone, blew out a plume of smoke. “I suspect you would. So why did you come here, then? Why have you tried to contact me?”

  “Your daughter was killed by Eduardo Cano . . .”

  “My daughter was shot in Mexico with two of her friends from college. She was caught in an ambush that was aimed at two corrupt DEA agents, who happened to be stopped at the same place . . .”

  I looked at him. “Mr. Lasser, we both know that’s not true.”

  “Why?” He took another drag, his measuring gaze drilled into my eyes. “Why would the details of Ana’s death be of any matter to you? I’m long out of the game. I’m not some big prize. No one cares about me. The U.S. government. The narco boys. You ever heard the term la cuota, Ms. Gould? That which is owed. Well, I’ve paid that debt. A lot dearer than most. I’m out. I’m just a private guy trying to remain so. There aren’t any big stories here.”

  “I’ve paid too.” I nodded.

  “Yes, I suspect you have. Much in the same way you seem to have your doubts about Ana, I figure it’s likely the same about you. Your husband. I know how these things work. And I’m truly sorry, Ms. Gould. But not so sorry that I’m going to let you come around here and tear my life apart again and reopen old wounds. I earned my out. And I intend to keep it that way. So I ask you again, Emmit and I here are just itching to hear it from you. Why?”

  “Curtis Kitchner came to see you, didn’t he? He knew about all this. The same things I know. That you were selling guns to the cartels. As a middleman for the U.S. government. Cano.”

  Lasser nodded, just a twitch of his chin. “Go on.”

  “The man who killed him in New York. He was a government agent. He said, ‘This is for Gillian,’ just before he pulled the trigger. I think you know the rest of the story. I was there.”

  Lasser sniffed amusedly. “Seems like Door Number Three was definitely the wrong choice that day, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. It was. At first I thought it was a person, of course. This Gillian. Everyone was trying to pin it on me—that I had killed the man in some kind of panic. And then killed my husband. So I had to prove I’d stumbled into something a whole lot more secret than just a roll in the hay. Like a hit. So I followed what Curtis had been working on. I came across the Culiacán shootings, then, virtually by accident, your daughter’s photos at her school, and then I read where she was from. Then it all kind of came together: That she had been the actual target of what happened down there, not the Bienvienes. Now the only question is why?”

  “Ana’s photos.” Lasser smiled wistfully. “Least they came to some use.”

  “Mr. Lasser, I made a big mistake being in a place I should never have been. I’ve lost my husband. My family. My freedom. My life’s been taken too. I think we both know, the people charged with bringing me in would rather see me dead than in jail. We also both know why. Well, I want out too. And I’ve damn well earned it as well. I can show that the man who killed Curtis in that hotel room was with the DEA in El Paso at the same time as the agent currently heading the federal task force charged with bringing me in.

  “And that they were both there, at the Kitano Hotel, that night. And that they both worked for the same person in El Paso, who is now running the DOJ’s department on narco-terrorism. I have every reason to believe they were all somehow connected to Cano, and that they were part of the plot to kill your daughter. What I don’t know is why. What was behind Curtis Kitchner’s death? What did he know that I still don’t? I was a witness to his murder, and now they’re trying to cover that up. They don’t want to capture me, Mr. Lasser. They want to silence me.”

  Lasser took a last drag on his cigarette. “You have had your hands full, haven’t you, now? And you think by knowing why my daughter died you can get your life back?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll never have my life back, any more than you. That’s gone. But maybe, just maybe, I can get back my children’s trust. You have other kids, Mr. Lasser? I know you do.”

  He hesitated before answering and finally just shrugged. “Yes.”

  “Do they know? Do they know why their sister died? Does your wife know?” Lasser’s look hardened, but he seemed to get what I was saying. “So how did you earn it, Mr. Lasser? Your cuota. Tell me: Why did Ana have to die?”

  He tossed down his cigarette butt and stamped it into the gravel with the heel of his boot. I couldn’t tell if he was weighing my nerve at asking him the question I just had and was about to call ol’ Emmit back over. Or if something else was brewing in him. The feeling like, what the hell. None of it matters now.

  I kept on him. “You were selling arms to the Mexico cartels, weren’t you?”

  “Nothing illegal in that. They were businessmen too. I’ve sold merchandise across the border for twenty years. Big-screen TVs, VCRs. Levi’s. Ralph Lauren. How they got them home was their business.”

  “AR-15 semiautomatics? Cop-killer pistols?”

  “Guns are simply product to me. It rubs you the wrong way, w
rite your congressman. That’s what I do.”

  “Then, what? The government approached you to act as an intermediary to the cartels?’

  A couple walked by us to their car. They seemed to have had a few too many.

  “NAFTA turned my world upside down,” Lasser said, turning away from the noise. “We went from a thriving business, people coming across the border in droves, backing trucks up to our warehouse. Wads of cash you’d only see in a casino. Then, poof . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Gone! In a year there were Apple showrooms on the Plaza San Jacinto in Mexico City. Costcos in Guadalajara. So you figure, how can something be illegal if it comes from the U.S. government?”

  I let him go on.

  “Don’t you get it . . . some twenty-five billion dollars a year finds its way into the Mexican economy from the narco trade. Some forty-odd banks there show assets of over ten billion that no one can explain or trace where they come from. And it’s not just the Mexican economy. You’ve got narco tycoons buying up real estate in Miami and Southern California. Half the hedge funds on Wall Street wouldn’t divulge where half their money comes from. And of course the gun trade here. You think I wanted in on this? I was just riding a wave. My Ana was pretty as a rose in springtime. And talented.”

  I nodded. “I saw her photos.”

  “You walked into that hotel room . . .” He drew in a breath and shook his head. “And I—”

  “You were selling guns directly to the Mexican cartels.” I cut him off. “Guns that were purchased by the U.S. government with money that was repaid to you as interest-free loans. More than six million dollars in just two years. But you’re not telling me it all . . . Everyone already knows about the gun trade to the drug cartels. This Fast and Furious program. That’s all come out. Eduardo Cano sided with the Juartes. So what did you do to incur their wrath? And the wrath of the U.S. government?”

  “What no one will ever tell you, Ms. Gould . . .” Lasser leaned back against the truck. “Several years back the Mexican government came to the conclusion this was a war they couldn’t win. But that in order to regain control of their country, to stop the killings—judges, reporters, regional politicians—to get people back out on the streets, the war had to end. There had to be a winner. You cannot have a civilized country in the Western Hemisphere where over seventy newspaper and TV journalists, two dozen elected judges, hundreds of policemen and elected officials, are brutally killed.”

  “I understand.”

  “So the only way out was to take sides. Go with the strongest player. So the Calderón government made its peace with the Juartes against their rivals. And it got its big brother to the north to agree. At least, certain factions within it . . .”

  “So all these millions you sold for the U.S. government were sent to the Juarte cartel?” I furrowed my brow. “That seems madness.”

  “The U.S. government wasn’t trying to curb the drug trade, Ms. Gould . . .” Lasser shrugged. “Only trying to end the violence. The trade itself, it’s a boon. It’s good times for everybody. That’s why this war had to be put to an end. It was interfering in the commerce. In everything. So they took sides.”

  “And you were the delivery pipeline? And Curtis found this out?”

  “He came around here asking the same questions. I told him he didn’t have long to live if he kept asking around.”

  But it still didn’t answer my question. Why had Cano turned on him? What had Lasser done to deserve his wrath?

  Suddenly it came clear.

  What everyone was trying to keep buried. Why Oscar Velez had to be silenced—if it ever came out just who the real, intended target was. Why Curtis was killed, his computer files destroyed.

  It wasn’t just the illegal selling of guns to the cartels. That was just the first course.

  The main event was that they had taken sides. That the United States government was secretly arming a cadre of murdering thugs and abetting drug traffickers across the border. That they were spilling blood and had their own hands in dozens of hooded assassinations and bodies left headless on the road. All in the hope that one billion-dollar narco conglomerate would destroy their rivals, and there would be stability there.

  One winner.

  And least, as Lasser had said, certain factions within it.

  “How high did this go?” I asked, glancing at Emmit, who was catching a chew, wondering if I was ever going to get the chance to tell this story.

  “I don’t know how high. To me it was all simply merchandise. They were customers. I received instructions from one particular person. I never knew the person’s name. Only their code name. The operation’s name.”

  “And what was that?” I pressed.

  Lasser chuckled. “You must be joking.”

  “You haven’t given me a single name. You haven’t given me anything that can be traced back to anyone. Or back to you.”

  “Damn right. That kind of information could get me killed.”

  “No one even knows I’m here, Mr. Lasser. Or where it would’ve come from. That name is my way out. It’s the way to get my life back. I’ll never bring you into it. I swear.”

  Lasser spread dirt over his dead butt with the toe of his boot. Then he turned away from Emmit and said a word in Spanish, barely louder than a whisper, almost under his breath. “Saltamontes.”

  “Saltamontes?” I stared back at him, the lamplight making his face appear white.

  “Grasshopper.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  A couple came out of the restaurant, walking past us on their way back to their car. Lasser’s man stood up and blocked any sight of us with his body.

  “I think you’ve had your questions answered,” Lasser said. “It’s getting cold, and my boy Emmit here, tough as he acts, has a low tolerance for a chill. Which wouldn’t be good for you.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” I asked.

  I expected him to nod toward the suddenly weather-afflicted Emmit and that was going to be it for me. Instead Lasser rubbed his jaw with his hand, two fingers across his nose. “You’re going to get yourself out of town, Ms. Gould. Consider it your lucky day. You got what you came for. Now you’re going back to wherever it is you’re from. Tonight. Now. You tell this story to a single soul, you implicate my name in any way, I promise on the soul of my daughter, what happened to her will be a romp in the hay compared to what your kids will go through.”

  “I have to tell it,” I said to him. “It’s the only way to save my life.”

  “Sorry, but that’s not my concern. I think it’s yours. Emmit . . .”

  The grizzled cowboy came toward me. I grabbed hold of Lasser’s arm. “You still didn’t tell me why she was killed. Why was she targeted? The Zetas were aligned with the Juartes. Making Juarte a winner was good for them as well.”

  “What does that matter now? I told you what you wanted. Now it’s up to you how you choose to use it.” He nodded to Emmit and headed toward his car.

  I grabbed his arm. “It matters because I’m not out here alone. It matters because the person who’s with me, Eduardo Cano has murdered her entire family to keep what you just told me quiet. What did you do that caused your daughter to be murdered by the same people you were selling to, along with four other innocent people?”

  I looked at his face and saw it. In the pale, questioning cast of guilt that came over it; he was barely able to look me in the eyes. What had he said a few minutes before: You walked into that hotel room. And I—

  He’d been about to tell me, and now I saw it.

  He’d walked through the wrong door too.

  “You didn’t just sell to them, did you? You were diverting arms. To other buyers. The Gulf cartel? Or the Jaliscos? You were selling to other buyers, and the Juartes found out. But they needed you for the arms, so they couldn’t just kill you as they would normally do. So they punished you with your daughter. I’m right, aren’t I, Mr. Lasser? That’s what caused it. Your beautiful Ana . . .”

&nbs
p; He pulled his arm away, but his look of shame and pain gave it all away. “It was how I stayed alive. The only way I stayed alive. Mexico is a complicated place, Ms. Gould, even with the United States as your protector. You think I had a choice? You don’t think the others came to me and threatened me with far worse? But yes, they needed me. Now get in your car and drive out of town, before the situation changes.”

  “What situation?” I asked. His look seemed to shift.

  “My largess,” he said. He tapped his palms against the truck and shrugged. “I’m afraid the friend you mentioned won’t be quite as lucky.”

  Those words were like the blade of a sharp knife curling the peel off an orange. Except the orange was in my gut. And it was throbbing. “What do you mean about my friend? Lauritzia?”

  “You were wrong,” Lasser sniffed grimly, “about no one knowing you were here . . . Just drive out of here, Ms. Gould. Don’t even go back to your motel, if you want to remain alive. This one’s not your fight.”

  My heart grew tight in terror. “Who knows we’re here?”

  “He only wants her. He doesn’t care about you.”

  I saw the answer to my question reflected in his own fear that rose up in his eyes.

  Cano.

  Lasser dug his dead cigarette butt further into the dirt with his boot. “You didn’t think you were the only ones who ended up in Gillian tonight?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Lauritzia!