He felt the wheels hop off the curb as he drove into the horizon of dull streetlamps, thinking of Tony Bags.

And the gun with the silencer.

Johnny waited as Bags climbed into the black Lincoln, the side of the car kneeling under his hulky bulk. Bags patted Johnny on the shoulder with his hammy hand, said, "C'mon, let's see the dollars, liana." He flared up a cigarette, powered down the window.

The way Johnny unpeeled the Ben Franklins from the wad Mona had given him impressed the wiseguy. Bags's hand came out of his black coat and showed the piece. He opened his lips enough to let out smoke, working the cigarette over to one corner of his mouth, speaking through the other side.

"It's a Titan twenny-five caliber, six shots. Same type that Long Island Lolita bitch used. Less than a pound with the silencer. And I got you an extra magazine clip." He ran a fat finger over the ivory grips, the blue-metal finish, the knurledsteel silencer.

Johnny listened from the driver's seat, not that any of it made a difference to him, as long as it worked.

"Good up to fiteen, twenny feet." Bags grinned and pointed it in Johnny's direction a second, then aimed it out the open window and pulled the trigger.

Johnny heard the compressed suppressed explosion-pool.. at the same time the fluorescent sign shattered, exploded, leaving jagged plastic hanging above the Jade Takeout shop.

"It's clean right now, but it's probably got bodies on it, know what I'm sayin'?"

Johnny nodded.

"I no keepy," he said in his best English.

"You no /teepee, you got dat right," chortled Bags. He popped the clip and removed the bullets, handing the goods over to Johnny. He folded the cash into his pocket and said "pussy time" with a Cheshire cat grin.

"Remember," he said, climbing out of the car, "you use it, you lose it. You get caught, you don't know nothing. Capice?"

"No pobbum," Johnny answered, slipping the piece under his seat.

"No pobbum, man," he repeated, watching Bags grease down into the Blossom.

Forgiveness

Two nights went by without a word. Her cheek, which had swelled the first day, felt normal now, but the sting of it had gone far deeper than skin and muscle. On the third day Uncle Four appeared at her door, as Mona knew he would, with roses and cognac, and a diamond tennis bracelet. She allowed him a kiss on the cheek and a fleeting hug, watching him the way an alleycat watches a bulldog.

Uncle Four wasn't apologetic, instead acted as if nothing had happened.

"It was just a misunderstanding," he declared. "You know how it is with men, this business of bei meen, saving face."

Mona pouted when he slipped the glittering bracelet on her wrist. He declined to summon the radio car, so they hailed a yellow cab to a fancy seafood restaurant uptown, which had a view on the Hudson River nightscape. Then he took her windowshopping along Fifth Avenue, promising her the Chanel, the Gucci, the many exquisite things he would buy her.

Mona was cool and said she'd forgotten about the incident, and before midnight came she allowed him again to enter her bedroom in the darkness above Henry Street.

She lay beneath the silk sheets, quiet after he had mounted her unsuccessfully with his horny drunk erection, finally rolling his fat weight off of her. She was pretending to be asleep.

Uncle Four was at her makeup table now, drinking again and talking on the phone with the night light on. When he was drunk this way he rambled, his voice slurring, bragging about his deals. Golo, she supposed was on the other end.

Mona lay silent, motionless, listening. She heard about the diamonds, the big deal, something about washing money and Hakka powder.

"October eleventh," she heard, the day after the Double Ten celebration. A week away. Her eyes open in the dark now, she listened.

"The lawyer's office. Dew keuih lo mou hei, motherfuckers. No bodyguards. Who would dare anyway? At noon."

Uncle Four was slugging down the XO. Bragging. Laughing a pig's chortle.

"The side elevator, on Hester Street. That's the trick. Dew! In a plastic takeout bag from Big Wong's. Ha! You come after, with them. Together, no, we call attention to ourselves."

Then he hung up the phone, grunted, staggered back toward the bed, toward Mona, lying breathless and still.

He rolled in next to her, his hands already on her body, squeezing her breasts, her nipples, his fat fingers sliding down to her soft downy triangle, poking, violating her. He rubbed his flaccid flesh against her backside, licked his tongue against her neck, the stench of liquor on his breath.

She kept from recoiling, as she always did, even as he turned her in toward him. The diamonds, she thought as he pushed her head lower. The gold coins and the big cash deal. Her head was on the quivering round of his stomach. She opened her mouth.

Then she closed her mind.

Temple

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.