Dama: A Prezly/Paladino Investigation, #5

By Sandy Raschke

PIs ELVYRA PREZLY AND CHUCK PALADINO TAKE ON A PRO BONO CASE INVOLVING THE ASSAULT OF A YOUNG IMMIGRANT MOTHER, WHO HAS COME TO LAS CRUCES FROM MEXICO ON A VISA TO WORK AS A CAKE DECORATOR IN A COMMERCIAL BAKERY.

 

When Coronada "Dama" Yuen-Padilla fails to pick up her four-year son at the preschool Elvyra and Chuck are considering for their twins, Beverly Eliasun, the administrator, pleads with them to find out what happened to her.

 

A downstairs neighbor tells them Dama is in the hospital, after being assaulted by a local pimp who had harassed and stalked her and her son, Caleb. 

A police artist develops a sketch of Dama's assailant and Miguel Dominguez is arrested at his home in El Paso, charged with numerous offenses, including the prostitution of an eleven-year-old girl. His attorney, Sheba Cannelas, argues for bail, but fails. She requests the case be consolidated and moved to Las Cruces. The judge agrees.

 

The guards ready Dominguez for transport but two men attack them and help Dominguez escape. They stop at Dama's apartment so he can exact his revenge before fleeing to Mexico. They force her neighbor, Patrice Juñoz, to get Dama to open the door. Chuck and Elvyra receive an ominous, silent link from Dama's handheld, rush to the apartment and subdue the three assailants before the police arrive.

 

After their bail hearings, Sheba Cannelas disappears. Several tips help Chuck and Elvyra track her to Bacalar on the Yucatan Peninsula. Las Cruces Police Detective Mattias Donal sends officers to arrest her for allegedly stealing Dominguez's hoard of gold and silver.

 

The Assistant DA offers plea deals to the defendants and they accept them. A temporary defense attorney represents them in court, but Dominguez balks, makes threats and rants to the judge. Will newly-appointed Judge Reezer accept their pleas or impose harsher sentences? Elvyra and Chuck work diligently to make sure Dama and Patrice receive the justice they deserve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandy Raschke
• Release date: Oct 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201415594

Book preview

Prologue

Elvyra Prezly and Charles Chuck Paladino have been together since 2076, but were colleagues and friends for eight years prior to that. They met at a PI convention in San Antonio, Texas. Chuck, a retired Marine Corps Captain, had been a private investigator for less than two years when his estranged spouse and three-year old boy were killed by a drunken truck driver who broadsided their car. Chuck sustained major injuries, and had no memory of the crash. When he told Elvyra his story and how years after their deaths, he still couldn’t shake the grief and depression of losing his family, she urged him to come to El Paso and start over.

He sold his home in San Antonio and moved. They remained friends and ran separate private investigation practices until their relationship became serious during Perennial 23, their first case together. They married in late June 2077, and now run Prezly-Paladino Investigations from their home in Mesilla, New Mexico.

They have solved a number of high-profile cases together, splitting their responsibilities between their professional obligations, caring for their elderly fathers who live in a cottage they had built on the property, and raising their fraternal twins, Isabella and Ryan.

Their last case involved the recovery of a stolen $3 million Indian sarpech, a bejeweled pin used to fasten the front of an Indian royal’s turban. After the case was solved, they decided to take a short hiatus and devote more time to their children.

The twins celebrated their third birthday on February 15, 2081, and in late March Elvyra and Chuck considered enrolling them in a nearby preschool. The Eliasun Learning Center in Las Cruces, run by Beverly Eliasun, a well-educated, experienced teacher and administrator, consistently received five-star reviews from parents whose children were enrolled in the school.

Chuck and Elvyra were about to link to Ms. Eliasun and confirm their decision to enroll the twins when she contacted them and asked for their help in finding the mother of a four-year student. For the first time in two years, Coronada Dama Yuen-Padilla failed to pick him up after school. Eliasun is worried Coronada may be in trouble but prefers to tell them in the privacy of her office as to what she believes might have happened to the young Chinese-Mexican immigrant.

Chapter 1

Chuck and Elvyra had been talking with Beverly Eliasun, owner and administrator of The Eliasun Learning Center, for an hour. Curled up on the couch across from her desk was Caleb Yuen-Padilla. He had fallen asleep after waiting hours for his mother to pick him up. Ms. Eliasun had linked a dozen times to Ms. Yuen-Padilla’s handheld but the repeated message, No Signal, continued.

Beverly told them in graphic detail about Ms. Yuen-Padilla’s encounter with a belligerent pimp who wanted her to join his stable. She had begged Dama, a loose translation of queen in Spanish, to go to the police and file charges, but the young woman was convinced if she made a complaint, her work visa would be revoked and she would be sent back to La Chinesca in Mexicali.

Does Caleb have a place to stay until his mother is found? Elvyra asked.

I don’t know, Beverly said. I know nothing about their living arrangements. She scrolled to the Yuen-Padilla file and gave them Dama’s address. I can take Caleb home with me and keep him overnight. As I said when I linked, I don’t want Child Services anywhere near him. It would be a strike against Dama’s ability to care for him and possibly subject her to deportation.

We understand, Chuck said. He stood up. We’ll go by her apartment and check with the neighbors, find out if they’ve seen her.

If she’s been injured, someone there might have seen an ambulance and we can follow up on that, Elvyra said.

Thank you for coming on such short notice, Beverly said. I’m sure this isn’t what you imagined when you expressed an interest in enrolling the twins in the school. The police were useless and, since you are private investigators and have young children, I thought you would be more sensitive to Caleb’s plight.

Chapter 2

Dama struggled to her knees then slid back to the floor, bewildered and afraid. Afraid of Miguel’s soft cruel laugh, the last thing she heard before the door swung off its hinges. Afraid of the warm, sticky blood streaming down her face that wouldn’t stop. Afraid of being weak and vulnerable. But most of all, afraid for her four-year old son, Caleb.

The heavy blow to her chest had sent her flying across the room. She glanced off the glass and metal coffee table and when it collapsed, a shard of glass carved out a piece of her forehead. 

Her handheld lay inches from her face. She reached for it—smashed beyond repair. Miguel must have stomped on it before he left.

In the apartment below, the vacuum cleaner droned. Elena Esposito had to be home. Did she hear the commotion? Dama banged on the floor hoping to attract the elderly woman’s attention. But the vacuum cleaner continued to run. She crawled to the couch, inched into a sitting position on the floor, and waited for the noise to stop.

* * *

There was no poetry in the assault of Coronada Yuen-Padilla. Three weeks ago, a pimp trolling the neighborhood saw her getting on an autonomous driven city bus with Caleb. When she returned home late that afternoon after picking him up from preschool, the pimp was leaning against the bus stop. Five days a week, mornings and afternoons, he waited for her, grinning through gapped teeth as he overtly assessed her body. One morning, he sidled up to her and asked if she wanted to make some money. She told him to go away, he was scaring her son.

The next day, he shoved a $25 general cash card into Caleb’s hands. She gave it back. He called her "Mami/Hot chick, and she ignored him. He called her La Reina de Hielo/The Ice Queen," after she told him to go away. He told her he could make her rich if she joined his stable. He described in lewd detail what he expected of her. She told him she would go to the police if he kept harassing her.

* * *

He left her alone for almost a week then returned to the bus stop. This time, he climbed onboard and sat in the back as she dropped Caleb off at preschool. When she transferred to another bus to go to work, a commercial bakery in the Las Cruces Industrial Park, he did the same, turning up the salsa music on his handheld so loud the passengers told him to lower the volume.

She told the owner/administrator of The Eliasun Learning Center a man was following her. He said his name was Miguel and he knew Chinese-Mexican women were hot-blooded and loved sex. Beverly Eliasun told her to immediately contact the police, but Dama was afraid. Afraid if she caused trouble, she’d lose her work permit and be returned to Mexicali.

* * *

The next morning after speaking with Ms. Eliasun, Coronada took Caleb to school. Her throat was scratchy and she felt as if she might be getting a cold, but she needed the money and went on to work. The pimp hadn’t shadowed her and she thought he had grown bored trying to convince her to become part of his stable.

The next day, she felt miserable but took Caleb to school then, feeling feverish, decided to go home. At 0930 hours, she linked to the Human Resources manager at the bakery and told her she had a bad cold and didn’t want to spread it to her co-workers. The woman thanked her and added, Get well soon.

She made a strong cup of oolong tea then went into their small bedroom to rest.

* * *

Several minutes later, she heard a knock on the door. Elena, her downstairs neighbor? When she looked through the peephole and saw Miguel, she told him to go away. He laughed and pushed hard against the door. Flimsy, it flew open and he came inside. He put his hands all over her, smacked his lips, and said she would soon be "mi puta/my whore." He promised her money and a large apartment, but she knew better than to fall for such nonsense. When she tried to fight him off, he retaliated. On the way out, as she lay bleeding on the floor, he told her she’d come begging to him one day.

Chapter 3

Coronada Yuen-Padilla had not been intimate with a man since before Caleb was born four years ago. Three years ago, she left La Chinesca in Mexicali, the Chinese-Mexican enclave where she was born and grew up. She took Caleb, thirteen months old at the time, and came to the United States. She had applied online for a job in a commercial bakery in Las Cruces, New Mexico and had been hired as a cake decorator an essential worker the owners told Immigration, which gave her access to a visa and allowed her to work for two years before it had to be renewed. And thanks to the owners, last year, they had recommended to the Immigration Service she be renewed for another two years.

She was young—twenty-three-years old—5-feet, 4-inches tall, slim, and given her Eurasian-Mexican heritage, some said exotic and beautiful. She was shy, even among her co-workers. She earned the current minimum wage, $25/hour. Sixty percent of her wage was allocated to the rent on a run-down, one-bedroom furnished apartment in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Las Cruces.  

Still, she liked living on her own. She discovered how many of the community’s amenities were available for free or at low cost to residents, including city transit, clinics, parks and museums and, after a two-month search, a preschool for Caleb. After testing Caleb, Beverly Eliasun, the school’s owner and administrator, offered her a subsidized tuition and monthly payments she could afford—that is, as long as no emergencies emptied her general cash card.

She was tri-lingual, spoke fluent Spanish, Cantonese and English. Her parents besieged her weekly to return home. They were owners of a Chinese restaurant in Mexicali, popular with both tourists and locals. They needed the help, but Dama wanted more than waiting on customers or standing for hours in a hot kitchen making dumplings and pot stickers. She wanted the freedom to make her own choices, to become a naturalized U. S. citizen, perhaps the owner of a small business someday—and she dreamed of falling in love with someone she could share her life with.

Damon Chong-Yglesia, Caleb’s birth father, was not the man she wanted to marry. When her older brother told her Damon had been recruited as a courier for the drug trade, Coronada ended their relationship. A few months after Caleb was born, Damon was ambushed, shot in the head and chest numerous times with a laser pistol, by a member of a rival cartel. He lingered in a coma for a few days then died. Coronada knew her future lay elsewhere.

* * *

Her head hurt. The sharp biting pain made her eyes water. She rose from her sitting position on the floor and lurched toward the kitchenette. She wet a dish towel with warm water and soap and cleaned the blood from her face then filled a glass with cool water and drank it down. The room spun. She gripped the edge of the sink. The vacuum cleaner stopped. She found the broom and turned it upside down, beating it on the floor several times before the dizziness took over again.

She slumped into a nearby chair and waited for Elena Esposito to come to the battered door.

Chapter 4

Chuck pulled to the curb in front of the address Beverly Eliasun gave them, off Trivitz Street. He estimated the building to be at least 75 years old, a three-story masonry structure painted a dull military gray, with weeds snaking across the dead grass in front, the entry door and window frames in need of paint. The GPS assistant had taken them to an area in an older part of Las Cruces populated by unemployed blue collar workers and a burgeoning influx of immigrants trying to escape political strife in Central America and elsewhere.   He secured the SUV and they went up the short, cracked concrete walkway to the entrance. No electronic keypad to unlock the door, surveillance camera, or intercom to contact a resident. He turned the knob and the door screeched open.

Anyone can walk inside. I don’t see any security measures, Elvyra said and Chuck grunted.

They took the stairs—the elevator out of order—to the third floor. Chuck knocked on the door of Apartment 3-B, and it opened. He turned the knob and the door swung off its hinges. They went inside.

Coronada, Elvyra called out. Ms. Yuen-Padilla? No answer. She glanced at the small living area. Chuck—look. Broken glass.

And blood, he said. A lot of it.

They went into the kitchen and found a towel saturated with dried blood. What do we do now? Elvyra asked.

I’ll see if there’s a resident manager. Something violent happened here. Someone should have heard it.

Maybe the tenant in the apartment below this one could tell us.

Apartment 2-B. You go, and I’ll look for the manager, he said.

Chuck took the stairs to the first floor while Elvyra went to the apartment below Ms. Yuen-Padilla’s. She knocked on the door and a tall, heavy-set elderly woman, with curly gray hair cropped close to her scalp, immediately answered. She had kind brown eyes and a wide smile.

We are looking for Coronada Yuen-Padilla, Elvyra said. Do you know where she is? Her apartment door is wide open and the inside is a mess, as if someone had been in a fight.

Are you ICE or the police? the woman asked.

Neither. My spouse and I are private investigators. She showed the woman her ID