He had driven from the Harlingen, Texas, airport to a motel in McAllen, where he expected to spend the night. The next morning, after breakfast with an executive from Zenith, he planned to drive to the office of his trucking firm across the Mexican border in Reynosa. But as he neared the international bridge, his cell phone rang. It was Leyva. On paper, Olademis Gabriela Leyva Ortiz owned 51 percent of Ken's firm.
Mexican law requires that Mexican nationals be the majority owner of a business.
Leyva got a nice salary and a car to be the silent partner, and about all she did was serve as a conduit for government paperwork. Her insistence put Krusensterna on edge, but he exited on the bridge and drove into Mexico. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Leyva, wondering how close he was. I felt real uneasy about that.