The Golden Monkey and Other Shiny Objects: A Prezly/Paladino Investigation

By Sandy Raschke

June 2077. El Paso PI Elvyra Prezly has been hired to find a statuette, stolen from her client, Hermione Jalisco. "The Golden Monkey" is the only tangible link that Hermione has to her son, Javier, found drowned in a lake within El Paso's Ascarate Park two years ago.Elvyra and her fiancé/colleague, Charles "Chuck" Paladino arrive at Hermione's home, located in a senior community of manufactured homes, to interview her. The door is slightly open. She and Chuck step inside and are both hit with a taser. Hermione is nowhere to be found.

 

Two days later, Chuck and Elvyra are back searching for Hermione. Surveillance vids and cab company records lead them to the address where a cab dropped her off—there they find Hermione tied up and abandoned in an empty house. After her rescue, the case becomes more complicated, with a suspected drug smuggling ring tied to her assailants. Detective Tai Vanh and his partner, Olga, the first AI humanoid detective in the department, are assigned to the case. Later, the FBI forms a task force with the El Paso police to investigate the smuggling ring. Elvyra and Chuck continue to search for the statuette, now thought to contain cut diamonds.

 

When Chuck and Elvyra return from their short honeymoon, they discover that Geraldo Panama, the 22-year-old IT tech and son of the park manager, has not been forthcoming on a number of questions they asked. He and Javier, friends in high school, had a bitter falling out over Alisa Alvarez, a young woman they both dated. Alisa believes Geraldo murdered Javier after they returned from Oaxaca Mexico, where Geraldo helped Javier buy goods for his new business in El Paso.

 

Was Geraldo involved in Javier's drowning? Did he steal the figurine from Hermione's home? Hermione volunteers at Sara's Place, a group home for teenage girls, and often invites the girls to visit her, including 14-year-old Belinda Sanchez, who claims that Geraldo showed her the statuette and promised it to her in exchange for sex.

 

As Elvyra and Chuck put pressure on Geraldo, his behavior becomes more erratic and hostile. With Detective Vanh's cooperation, they devise a plan to trap Geraldo. Will the information they uncover lead to the location of the Golden Monkey? Or will the clever and dangerous computer geek outwit them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandy Raschke
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393498476

Book preview

Chapter 1

Private investigator Elvyra Prezly was still twitching from the taser strike. She lay prone on the floor of Hermione Jalisco’s home, drooling. Her fiancé and colleague, PI Charles Paladino, had just gotten to his knees and crawled toward her. Although he had tried twice, he couldn’t stand up.

They had been ambushed as they came through the door. He saw black sneakers and a blur of a figure as he went down tingling and twitching. The taser had hit his inner thigh, although he was sure that whoever did it had aimed for something more vital. His thoughts were jumbled, but he was certain of one thing: someone had touched him.

Daylight burglars? Maybe. But everything, including his vision, was still foggy, and he had a slight headache.

He turned Elvyra over and pulled her into his lap. El? Are you all right?

She tried to talk but her mouth wouldn’t move.

Someone tasered us at a very high level. I think you got the worst of it.

She gave him a weak nod.

Where is Hermione Jalisco? he asked. Aren’t we supposed to meet her here?

Elvyra stopped twitching. Yes, she said in a tremulous voice.

Chuck wiped away the drool trickling down her chin and then kissed the top of her head. You’ll feel better soon.

He got out his handheld and with shaking hands linked to the El Paso Police Department.

Chapter 2

It seemed like a simple case. Hermione Jalisco had contacted Elvyra Prezly Investigations three days ago to ask her to find a precious trinket that had gone missing.  She came into the office the next day and showed Elvyra the photo of what she called The Golden Monkey, a piece of folk art from Oaxaca Mexico—fashioned in the style of the stone statues of the Olmec at La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico. The tailless spider monkey was a small, gold-painted statuette, crudely-constructed of brass, a birthday gift from her now deceased son, Javier. To most people, Hermione said, it looked rough and unfinished without its tail, but the piece was very precious to her, and she told Elvyra she would pay a reasonable fee to find the monkey and have it returned to her.

Her twenty-year old son had died mysteriously two years ago, his body found submerged in the lake within El Paso’s Ascarate Park. He was an expert swimmer, but the police had pulled him from the lake fully clothed. His small e-SUV was still in the parking lot, unlocked. Had he gone there to meet someone?

The autopsy revealed he had drowned. The medical examiner searched for evidence of a struggle, bruises or a pin prick that might have indicated drugs or poison injected into his body. A toxicology report showed no drugs in his system. He had no bruises or broken bones. No one thought he had committed suicide. The security cams placed in the parking lot and around the lake revealed Javier getting out of his car and walking toward a picnic table at the edge of the lake; the one security cam, attached to a nearby tree, revealed little—just as he approached the picnic table, the vid had broken up and became fuzzy. The police had nothing to go on and now considered it a cold case.

Hermione lived in the Desert Regency Manufactured Home and RV Community in El Paso, an adult community with fifty modular homes and an RV park for temporary stays and tourists. She had moved there with Javier six years ago, after her spouse died and had easily found friends. She told Elvyra that she stayed busy by volunteering and participating in other activities within and outside the adult community.

Recently, a rash of burglaries had occurred in several areas within the city, all involving adult communities. In response, the management of the Desert Regency had set up additional security cams to capture traffic coming and going, with prominent signs at the entrance to the development that all traffic was subject to surveillance. Several residents also had cameras installed on their property.

BY THE TIME THE POLICE arrived, Elvyra was able to speak. She and Chuck showed the two AI humanoid female officers their PI licenses and IDs, and explained why they were in Ms. Jalisco’s home. Chuck told Officers Brazos and Mercado he had just scanned for fingerprints, and handed Officer Mercado his handheld and she transferred the images to her device.

He told them that he and Elvyra sometimes worked together, but Charles Paladino Investigations was not the principal investigator in this case.

Officer Brazos looked at them with unblinking eyes. Do you need medical attention? she asked in her halting, slightly mechanical voice. You look dazed, Ms. Prezly.

No, Elvyra said. I think we’re okay.

Where is Ms. Jalisco?" asked Officer Mercado.

I don’t know, Elvyra said. I was supposed to meet her here at 0900 hours, but we found the door slightly open and went inside to look for her. That’s when we were tasered.

There is little we can do now, Officer Mercado said. We will check with the park management about reviewing their sec-cams, see if we can find a vehicle that might have been seen in the vicinity. Then we will put out a BOLO on Ms. Jalisco. When we get back to the station, we will turn over the prints to the forensics team for identification.

We could handle the sec-cams for you and canvass the neighbors to see if anyone knows where she went, Chuck said. That should take some of the burden off of you.

Thank you, Mr. Paladino. With so many burglaries in the area, we could use the help, Officer Mercado said. Six burglaries have taken place in the daylight hours within the last two weeks, all in adult communities.

Interesting, Elvyra said, exercising her jaw. Could be a new burglary ring, taking advantage of older people.

We have not heard anything about that, but we will look into it, Officer Brazos said. You might want to relax for a while. I have learned tasers can sap your strength.

Tell me about it, Elvyra said.

Chapter 3

They went home. Elvyra still felt shaky. She shuffled to the couch and lay down. Chuck tucked a pillow under her head and a few minutes later, brought her a cup of jasmine tea.

She sat up. Her hands were still trembling and Chuck held the cup while she took a sip. My entire body was jerking and buzzing, she said. I found it hard to breathe and felt as if I’d been stung by a thousand bees. I’ve been tasered before, part of an exercise in my first year Criminology class at UTEP. That was one on a scale of ten compared to this.

He sat down next to her. I can do the canvassing if you’re not up to it.

You got zapped. Aren’t you feeling wonky, too?

Somewhat. I’ve got a slight headache. You got hit in the chest while I got it in the thigh, he said. The voltage could have stopped your heart from beating. He took her shaking hand and tenderly kissed it. I was conscious but couldn’t get up. Right now, I still hear buzzing in my ears and feel as if someone has filled my mouth with cotton, but it’s slowly going away.

The wedding’s in two weeks. Maybe we should let the police handle it, and not put ourselves in further danger, Elvyra said in a tentative tone.

Maybe Hermione will return to her home and we won’t need to canvass her neighbors, Chuck said.

I wish, she said and looked blankly at him for a few seconds. Then— But I’ve reconsidered. She gave me a $500 retainer to search for the statuette and, as soon as I feel better, I’m going to do what she asked.

Chapter 4

With Chuck’s prodding , they had finally set a date for the wedding: June 25, 2077. It would be a modest ceremony and reception, with only close friends and family in attendance.

Chuck’s first marriage had cured him of large, ostentatious displays of wealth and privilege. He was a 27-year-old Lieutenant when he married into a wealthy San Antonio family while on active duty as a Marine Corps intelligence officer. He and Teresa had been married for ten years when a drunk, driving a box truck, plowed into their car and killed her and their three-year old son, Robbie. Chuck was in a coma for three days and awoke to a severe concussion, broken legs, rib and vertebrae fractures, and no memory of the accident. Occasionally, he suffered flashbacks, bits and pieces that jolted him awake at night. He had been retired for a year from the Marine Corps and had started his agency only months before the accident.

That was almost eight years ago. He and Elvyra had become good friends since meeting each other seven years ago at a conference for Private Investigators in San Antonio. They discovered they had similar interests. Both had advanced college degrees and had served in the military—Elvyra as an Army Lieutenant at Fort Bliss, and Chuck as a Captain headquartered at the Marine Corps Intelligence Center in Quantico, Virginia. They enjoyed eating, hiking, and the shooting sports.

When he told Elvyra what had happened to his family and how depressed he had been, she suggested he consider moving away from San Antonio and his intrusive in-laws. A few months later, Chuck sold the house, gave Pete, his father-in-law the proceeds from the home he never wanted, and moved from San Antonio to El Paso, where he set up Charles Paladino Investigations in an office/apartment arrangement downtown.

For the last six years, depending on their case loads, Elvyra and Chuck tried to get together at least once a month. They took long hikes in the Organ Mountains or other parks in New Mexico and Texas, and went target shooting locally or quail hunting in the Texas hill country. Their relationship remained friendly and platonic. It took him years after the death of his family to get to the point where he could allow someone into his life again—and that someone was Elvyra.

They became more than friends after working on the Perennial 23 case together. He later admitted that his relationship with Teresa had been a difficult one, but now he was ready to marry again—this time for love—and Elvyra, after stalling for a while, finally accepted his proposal last December. They had dinner at Anson Eleven in El Paso to celebrate a new contract he had won to do background checks for a defense contractor. He surprised her with a ring, and she told him she had found Franklin Paladino, his father, whom he hadn’t seen in over twenty-eight years.

Chapter 5

Chuck had been searching for his father since the age of seventeen. Two years before, after Chuck had just turned fifteen, his mother died from acute alcohol poisoning and shortly after, his nineteen-year old sister Geneese from a drug overdose. Then Franklin Paladino lost his job as an online commercial insurance agent. The unemployment compensation kept them going for a year. When that ran out, Franklin sold the family’s home in Pueblo, Colorado and he and Chuck moved to Denver to look for work. As the meager proceeds of the house sale dwindled, Franklin worried. He couldn’t find work in Denver either.

One day, Chuck came home from his part-time job at the community college library to an empty house. The next day, Franklin sent his son a text message saying that he had gone to Utah to look for work. He left Chuck a $1,500 general currency card to pay the rent and utilities on the modular home they were renting and,when that ran out two months later, Chuck, using the letter his father wrote that gave him permission to enlist in the military, signed up with the Marine Corps.

UNFORTUNATELY, UNTIL he retired from the Corps and started his business, he didn’t have the means, knowledge, or experience to look for his father. The one place he overlooked when he got his PI license was California, and Elvyra started there. Her gut instinct told her that Franklin was in Southern part of the State. Opportunities for finding work were better there, along with a warmer climate compared to the mountain states.

She started with employment records and finding nothing, did a global search for Franklin Paladino. There were five men of the same name in the area, but she eventually found him living in Escondido, a city northeast of San Diego, in a government-subsidized senior residence for the disabled. He had suffered a stroke at the age of seventy. Because he had no permanent address at the time and had collapsed on the street, no one paid attention to his plight until hours later. By the time he was found and taken to the hospital, the damage had been done. One leg was permanently paralyzed, the other partially, and he had been in a wheelchair ever since. He had learned how to speak again, but was unable to walk, or stand without assistance.

When Elvyra linked to the facility where he lived and told him who she was and why she had been looking for him, Franklin broke down then thanked God that Chuck had made a good life for himself. He told Elvyra that he had been ashamed to leave his teenage son so abruptly but he was desperate for work and knew Chuck was a resourceful and smart young man who could take care of himself.

In San Diego he found temporary jobs selling various products including insurance, but had never found permanent employment because of the increasing use of AI humanoids as sales personnel and clerks. Franklin had tried a few times to contact his son but Chuck had been sent to San Diego for basic training and no longer had his old handheld. In the thirteen weeks Chuck spent in San Diego, their paths never crossed.

Franklin’s last job ended when he was almost sixty-five years old, and he spent the next five years volunteering at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, where he could find a bed and food for the night.

He told Elvyra he had been waiting to die, but now, although frail, elderly, and disabled, he had finally had found a reason to live: his son.

CHUCK AND ELVYRA TRAVELED to Escondido to pick him up. A tearful reunion brought father and son together again. Later, Chuck told Elvyra that he had never loved her more than when his eyes settled on his father.

They found a similar government-subsidized facility for disabled seniors in El Paso, but Chuck consulted a tax and estate lawyer and set up a Special Needs trust to pay for his father’s care. Franklin was less than five miles away from their condo, and Chuck made it his mission to visit his father as much as possible.

THE WEDDING PLANS WERE almost complete. The ceremony was to take place in a small chapel in Mesilla, New Mexico, with the reception at the Prezly family home nearby, where Elvyra’s dad, Ret. Air Force Colonel Robert Prezly, now in his nineties, still lived.  

Knowing Chuck’s preference for no showy displays, Robert suggested the reception be held in the backyard. Chuck and Elvyra agreed. They hired a country and western band—the same group that had played last year at Billy’s Bar & Grill for the reunion of Chuck’s former intelligence unit. And to keep everything informal, they hired a caterer to serve a buffet dinner and handle the open bar, all within a large white tent.

With the help of Gloriana Kepplenick, a new friend and the expert hacker they had used on the Perennial 23 case, Elvyra found her wedding dress—a strapless white satin gown that showed off her well-toned shoulders and arms, as well as her curves. Gloriana said it looked fabulous on her. When the bridal consultant asked Elvyra about wearing a veil, she said no. To her and Chuck, it seemed silly to cover her face when they had known each other for so long and had been living together for the better part of a year. They wanted to look at each other while reciting their vows and not have a veil obscure their intentions. The consultant then suggested a mini-tiara and the former flamboyant private investigator held back her laughter and politely said, Not that either.

As for Gloriana, the maid of honor, she offered to remove the purple streaks from her short, black spiky hair, the garish eye shadow, and all the nose, ear and lip rings. They found a simple but elegant sheath for her to wear, in a pale jade color that enhanced her Jamaican heritage. She stood in front of the mirror, surprised at her transformation from Goth to chic.

Chapter 6

After they spent two days recuperating, Chuck checked in with the El Paso police department. No, they hadn’t found Hermione Jalisco, nor had the numerous fingerprints been identified. Officer Brazos was planning to return to the residence and have the crime scene investigators do a more thorough search.

Chuck told Officer Brazos that he and Elvyra would be contacting the management of Desert Regency to view the surveillance vids.  Brazos thanked him. There had been two more