Johnny Liddell stepped out of the slow-moving tide of sight-seers, western-garbed Orientals, uninhibited slant-eyed school children screaming the American idiom, and all the other inconsistencies that make Mott Street the Main Street of Chinatown. He branched off into a quiet, almost empty side street where the shops were less garish, substituting dried fish and other Chinese delicacies in their windows for the brightly colored porcelains and garish gimcracks in the tourist traps on Mott. The buildings here were weather-beaten and ancient, but bore their age with dignity. No automobiles rode through the street; the sidewalks were almost empty.
Liddell singled out a house in the center of the block with a large Chinese grocery on its ground floor. The entrance to the dwellings above was a
