The Accountant's Story (34 page)

Acknowledgments

This book, with its language and logistical difficulties, required the assistance of many people. For obvious reasons some of them have asked not to be identified. To those people, we certainly respect your wishes, but we also want to express our appreciation to you for your invaluable contributions.

We especially would like to acknowledge the hard work done by Alex Orozco, who was instrumental in putting together this project and who fostered it through many days and nights, and whose phone bill must have been enormous. In addition, Michael Planit brought together many complicated components into one sensible and cohesive unit, creating the business structure that enabled everyone to contribute to the best of their ability.

Our literary agent, Ian Kleinert, originally with the extremely capable Frank Weimann of the Literary Group and later with the newly founded Objective Entertainment, worked diligently to find us the best possible publishing situation, and eventually put us together with the extraordinarily respected executive editor Rick Wolff of Grand Central Publishing in America and Jack Fogg at Hodder & Stoughton in the U.K., both of whom have been tremendously supportive throughout the process—and pushed at all the right times.

Among those people we can thank publicly we especially want to offer our thanks to Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollack, a relentless prosecutor and a respected judge, who offered us her memories and her transcripts; and DEA agent Sam X. Trotman, who was in charge of America’s investigation of Pablo Escobar, and whose exploits and courage should one day result in his own story being told. In addition we offer our gratitude to Florida attorneys Fred A. Schwartz and Alvin Entin, Guylaine Cote, Ron Cloos, Robert Zankl, and Pat Mitchell for their contributions and Richard Canton for his personal stories.

We would also like to express our thanks for their space to Jerry Stern and Penny Farber. And the amazing work of the Geek Squad of Cross County Mall, in New York, for saving the day.

It would have been impossible to complete this book without the unfailing assistance of Tito Dominguez, who was always there to answer questions, create contacts, and interpret their answers. Tito also has an amazing story to tell—and we can’t wait to see the movie.

Working in two languages is especially difficult, and we would be remiss not to thank Suzanne Copitzky and her crew at the Karmen Executive Center in Seattle, Washington.

And David Fisher would like to express his personal appreciation to Roberto Escobar. What he did was very difficult, but this was a story he wanted told, and I am very proud to have worked with him.

And, and always, David wants to recognize his beautiful wife, Laura, who makes his days shine brightly; and his sons Beau Charles and Taylor Jesse.