Last Day in Vegas chapter 2

Johnnie Pai-Gow had been a precocious youth albeit one with a lax sense of moral convictions. On the morning of the family move to Texas, Johnnie, at age nine, had traded a a non-functioning pellet rifle to a neighborhood boy for a valuable baseball card collection that the boy's father had willed to him after dying in the tragic Cleveland pickle factory fire of 1966.
Johnnie hid the collection from his parents, Ephraim Pai and Su Han Yan Gow.
In Austin he took the collection to a renowned sports memorabilia dealer who,although initially wary of purchasing such a valuable collection from a minor, bought(after Johnnie reduced his asking price by half) the collection for fourteen thousand dollars in cash.
Johnnie kept the money hidden from his parents, Ephraim Pai and Su Han Yan Gow.
Johnnie's father Ephraim Pai was a stern taskmaster and would brook no dissent. Luckily he was also frequently absent as most of his time was spent in illegal gambling haunts. Johnnie knew if his father got his hands on the money it would soon disappear.
Ephraim Pai was the illegitimate product of a Pentecostal missionary from Toledo, Ohio and a Cambodian field worker. Ephraim practiced a bastardized form of religion that included Jesus, the Virgin, and the Buddha all spiced liberally with a dose of animism. He believed spirits inhabited all things and had been removed from gambling establishments on numerous occassions after verbally berating the chair he had been sitting in while playing a particularly bad hand of poker.
Johnnie's mother Su Han Yan Gow had come from a well-to-do family in China and was said to have been related to the last emperor. The Family had fled China concealed on a container ship and several of them died of a mysterious illness which was thought to have been a curse put upon them by the wife of chairman Mao Tse-Tung. In actuality it was syphilis.