Jack swung in for a late lunch at the Chinatown Arcade, and ordered Malaysian noodles with satay, peanut sauce. There was a composite sketch of the Chinatown Rapist in the window, and Jack knew it was just a matter of time before this predator of children, was caught. Trouble was, he didn't feel it was cops who were going to nail him. The tongs had their own bounty out, and they weren't forthcoming with information.
The shop had a small shrine containing a Kzoan Kung god flanked by red Christmas bulbs, and a mirrored bot gzoa octagram to deflect bad spirits. The shrine made him remember Pa, and he ate his noodles toward the end of his shift thinking about the Temple he was overdue to visit.
The Grace Temple of Heaven was a Buddhist order that occupied two stories above Weinstein's Wholesale Fabrics on Orchard Street among the Yiddishe.
The entrance was a stairway on Allen Slip, and Jack ascended past the second floor where there was a dining hall and kitchen, where the monks prepared the vegetarian jaai, rice and soups, that they shared with their faithful.
He entered the temple on the third floor and looked for the monks, scanning the huge space beneath a row of gleaming crystal chandeliers. The room had a twenty-foot ceiling, which was ample height for the three ten-foot gilded Buddhas that sat on the front stage. There were prayer cushions and mats and worshippers reading from books in front of the altars, where he spotted the elder sister monk.
He went over to the table and proffered a five-dollar bill.
"Sifu," he said, teacher, nodding respectfully at the shaved head with dot markings. She accepted the offering and he signed in. Behind her there was another room, which contained a wall of matchbook-size photographs attached to plastic tags with Chinese names. There was an altar there, and the flanking walls featured four-foot-tall Buddhas under glass-enclosed intricately carved pagodas.
There were smaller multi-faced and multi-armed Buddhas in gold and red, and a scattering of kuan yin, goddesses of mercy.
He stepped up to the altar, which was adorned with oranges and peaches, vases of gladioli, carnations, and mums. He took three sticks of incense, lit them and placed them in the lilypads of lit candles floating in a large glass urn of oil, an eternal flame.
The yellow plastic tag with Ma and Pa's names and photos was on the upper left of the wall, fitted in with a hundred others, closer to the heavenly clouds painted on the ceiling.
The humming sound he had heard upon entering the temple turned out to be the chanting of the monks, namor namor namor, so smooth it sounded like one word, an unending om.
He bowed three times, planted the other sticks of incense on the altar and stared at his parents yellow tag. Ommmmm, and he could feel the spirits of Ma and Pa flowing through him.