Doom Fox by Iceberg Slim

rocky childhood, torn between two neurotic parents. Now Mai, as you know I've got no claim to pristine roots. My mother was a rag picker when top price was two cents a pound. My old man was the only Jewish wino bum it has ever been my great displeasure to know.'
    'Neither have I that claim' Mai says sadly. 'My father a hanged opium smuggler, my mother a permanent asylum inmate before my seventh birthday.'
    He says, 'Mai, aside from the basic disadvantage of marriage at this time to Melvin's launching into pre-med school this fall, candidly, I must say, I'm reluctant to inflict Melvin as a husband on her. I'm convinced the boy is just not emotionally ready to handle the responsibilities and strictures of husband and father.'
    He pauses to lift their breakfast trays off the bed to the carpet. He reaches into a humidor atop a blond Chippendale nightstand near the window. He takes a lighter from the pocket of his gold brocade smoking jacket, lights the panatella. He sighs pleasure as he exhales a gust of aromatic smoke.
    She smiles, kisses his blue stubbled jaw. Phantom vestiges of her almond eyed cafe-au-lait splendor mystiques through the drawn mask of her illness in the soft maize blush of infant sun.
    She says, 'Have you had a chance to finish the investigator's reports?'
    He says, 'Yes, late last night and they depressed me.'
    'Why?' she asks. Then, in the same breath, 'Does Mel know about the reports?'
    He shakes his head to the second question. He says, 'Well, Baptiste, poor guy, got only an ace-deuce shot at life from the beginning ... his father appeared as a prosecution witness in the murder conviction of the leader of a New Orleans Voodoo sect. Three-year-old Baptiste saw the execution of his mother and father and six older brothers and sisters. He was kidnapped by the killers and forced into a life of transvestism, perhaps perversion, certainly crime by the new homosexual "Fagin" leader of the sect.
    'At fifteen, he was an accomplished card sharp, pickpocket and ravishing female impersonator baiting tourist tricks for muggers in the French Quarter. There he met Phillipa, an orphaned teenage whiz at the badger game played with a Baton Rouge based pimp and con man on johns during Mardi Gras. Her mentor got swept up in a police net. Phillipa and Baptiste fled, in tandem, to hustle the golden west, San Francisco.
    'At twenty-two, in L.A., he married Phillipa, pregnant with Reba, to dramatically prove that against all odds he was heterosexual with a heart still miraculously vulnerable to the grand passion. After we delivered Reba, he retired Phillipa as strictly mother and housewife. Since then he has earned their living as a journey man card swindler with only an occasional dip into an unsuspecting pocket. He lost Phillipa last year, as you know, to that Williams kid after gun play ... all these years we thought the guy sold roofing and siding contracts.'
    Mai Ling heaves a heavy sigh. 'Baptiste is certainly no paragon father-in-law for Melvin ... but I'm thinking it's unfair that Reba should suffer the consequences of her father's flaws. I cast my vote loud and clear for Reba as our daughter-in-law. She and the baby can be cared for here while Melvin is in pre-med. Perhaps Baptiste has reformed.'
    Maximal irritation flickers Saul's face. 'Sweetheart, it can't work. Baptiste had his throat cut up in San Francisco last year while plying his craft. The guy is a predator in concrete. Why, if we brought him into our lives, he'd leech onto our friends and associates to infiltrate their card games. He'd fleece them and sooner or later be unmasked as a cheat. We would be excommunicated and disgraced with him.'
    She says, 'But they love each other!'
    He smiles wryly. 'She loves Melvin, you mean. He loves to go to bed with her as he does with any exceptionally endowed female that catches his Don Juan eye. Face it, Mai, we love the boy and I suspect we cushioned him too much, gave him too much. I think we ruined him in the ghetto