He was an abandoned child. A cop found him in a cardboard box with only his name and "June 2, 1920," the date of his birth, pinned in a note to his receiving blanket. His first few months were spent at the old Foundling Hospital on East 68th Street. He was raised in an orphanage in the Bronx and was on his own at sixteen, working as a busboy in a series of restaurants. Within a year, he was playing piano and singing in road-houses upstate.

He was "discovered" by Spider Simpson in 1938 and soon was headlining with a fifteen-piece orchestra. He set an attendance record for a week's engagement at the Paramount Theatre in 1940 that wasn't equaled until the Sinatra craze of '44. In 1941, his records sold over five million copies, and his income was said to be better than $750,000. There were several stories about his injury in Tunisia, one reporting that he was "presumed dead," and that was the end of it. There was nothing about his hospitalization or return to the States.

I sorted through the rest of the material, making a small pile of the stuff I wanted to keep. Two photos, one a studio glossy of Favorite in a tuxedo, his Vaseline-bright hair pomaded into a frozen black wave. The agent's name and address were rubber-stamped on the back: WARREN WAGNER, THEATRICAL REPRESENTATIVE, 1619 BROADWAY (THE BRILL BUILDING). WYNDHAM 9-3500.

The other glossy showed the Spider Simpson orchestra in 1940. Johnny stood to one side with his hands folded like a choirboy. The names of all the sidemen were written in beside them on the print.

I borrowed three other items, clippings that caught my attention because they didn't feel like part of the package. The first was a photo from Life. It was taken at Dickie Wells's bar. in Harlem and showed Johnny leaning against a baby grand, holding a drink in one hand and singing along with a Negro piano player named Edison "Toots" Sweet. There was a piece from Downbeat, dealing with the singer's superstitions. The story claimed he went out to Coney Island once a week whenever he was in town and had his palm read by a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora.

The last item was a squib in Walter Winchell's column dated 11/20/42 announcing that Johnny Favorite was breaking off his two-year engagement to Margaret Krusemark, daughter of Ethan Krusemark, the shipping millionaire.

I shuffled all of this stuff together, got a manila envelope out of the bottom drawer, and stuffed it inside. Then, on a hunch, I dug out the glossy of Favorite, and called the number in the Brill Building stamped on the back.

"Warren Wagner Associates," answered a perky female voice.

I gave her my name and made an appointment to see Mr. Wagner at noon.

"He has a luncheon engagement at twelve-thirty and can only give you a few minutes."

"I'll take them," I said.

EIGHT.

"When you're not on Broadway, everything is Bridgeport." This blue-ribbon wisecrack was made to George M. Cohan in 1915 by Arthur "Bugs" Baer, whose column in the Journal-American I read every day for years. It might have been true in 1915. I can't say, not having been there. That was the era of Rector's and Shanley's and the New York Roof. The Broadway I knew was Bridgeport; a carnie street of shooting galleries and Howard Johnson's; Pokerino parlors and hot dog stands. Two old dowagers, Times Tower and the Astor Hotel, were all that remained from the golden age "Bugs" Baer remembered.

The Brill Building was on 49th and Broadway. Walking up from 43rd, I tried to remember how the Square looked the night I saw it for the first time. So much had changed. It was New Year's Eve of '43. An entire year of my life had vanished. I was fresh out of an army hospital with a brand-new face and nothing but loose change in my pockets. Someone had lifted my wallet earlier in the evening, taking all I owned: driver's license, discharge papers, dogtags, the works. Caught up in the vast crowd and surrounded by the electric pyrotechnics of the spectaculars, I felt my past sloughing away like a shed snakeskin. I had no identification, no money, no place to live, and knew only that I was heading downtown.

It took an hour to move from in front of the Palace Theatre to the center of the Square, between the Astor and Bond Clothes, home of the "two-trouser suit." I stood there at midnight and watched the golden ball drop on top of Times Tower, a landmark I didn't reach for another hour. That was when I saw the lights in the Crossroads office and played a hunch which led me to Ernie Cavalero and a job I've never left.

In those days, a pair of mammoth nude statues, male and female, bookended the block-long waterfall on the roof of Bond Clothes. Today, gigantic twin Pepsi bottles loomed in their place. I wondered if the plaster statues were still there, trapped inside the sheet-metal bottles like caterpillars slumbering within the confines of their chrysalides.

Outside the Brill Building, a tramp in a tattered army greatcoat paced back and forth, muttering, "Scumbag, scumbag" to all who entered. I checked the directory at the end of the narrow T-shaped lobby and located Warren Wagner Associates, surrounded by dozens of song-pluggers, prizefight promoters, and fly-by-night music publishers. The creaking elevator took me to the eighth floor, and I prowled a dim hallway until I found the office. It was in a corner of the building, several rabbit-warren cubicles with interconnecting doors.

The receptionist was knitting when I opened the door. "You Mr. Angel?" she asked, forming her words around a wad of gum.

I said that I was and got a card out of my dummy wallet. It had my name on it but said I was a representative of the Occidental Life and Casualty Corp. A friend with a print shop in the Village made them up for me in a dozen professions. Everything from ambulance chaser to zoologist.

The receptionist pincered the card between fingernails as green and glossy as beetle wings. She had large breasts and slim hips and emphasized them with a pink angora sweater and a tight black skirt. Her hair was on the brassy side of platinum. "Wait here a minute, wouldja please," she said, smiling and chewing at the same time. "Have a seat or something."

She sidled past me, tapped once with her knuckle on a door marked PRIVATE, and stepped inside. Across from where she entered stood an identical door equally private. In between, the walls were hung with hundreds of framed photographs, the faded smiles preserved like moths under glass. I looked around and found the same 8-by-10 glossy of Johnny Favorite that I carried in the manila envelope under my arm. It was high on the left-hand wall, flanked by photos of a female ventriloquist and a fat man playing the clarinet.

The door behind me opened and the receptionist said: "Mr. Wagner will see you right away."

I said thanks and went in. The inner office was half the size of the cubbyhole outside. The pictures on the walls seemed newer, but the smiles were just as faded. A cigarette-scarred wooden desk took up most of the floor space. Behind it, a young man in shirtsleeves was shaving with an electric razor. "Five minutes," he said, holding up his hand, palm outward so I could count his fingers.

I sat my attache case on the worn green rug and stared at the kid as he finished shaving. He had curly, rust-colored hair and freckles. Beneath his horn-rimmed glasses, he couldn't have been much more than twenty-four or twenty-five.

"Mr. Wagner?" I asked when he switched off the razor.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Warren Wagner?"

"That's right."

"Surely you're not the same man who was Johnny Favorite's agent?"

"You're thinking about Dad. I'm Warren junior."

"Then it's your father I'd like to speak to."

"You're out of luck. He's been dead four years."

"I see."

"What's this all about?" Warren Jr. leaned back in his leatherette chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

"Jonathan Liebling is named a beneficiary in a policy owned by one of our customers. This office was given as his address."

Warren Wagner, Jr. started to laugh.

"There's not a great deal of money involved," I said. "The gesture of an old fan, perhaps. Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Favorite?"

The kid was laughing like crazy now. "That's terrific," he snorted. "Really terrific. Johnny Favorite, the missing heir."

"Quite frankly, I fail to see the humor in all this."

"Yeah? Well, lemme draw you a picture. Johnny Favorite is flat on his back in a nut hatch upstate. He's been a turnip for nearly twenty years."

"Say, that's a wonderful joke. Know any other good ones?"

"You don't understand," he said, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes. "Johnny Favorite was Dad's big score. He sank every penny he had in the world into buying his contract from Spider Simpson. Then, just as he was riding high, Favorite got drafted. There were movie deals and everything in the works. The army sends a million-dollar property to North Africa and three months later ships home a sack of potatoes."

"That's too bad."

"Damn right it's too bad. Too bad for my pop. He never got over it. For years he thought Favorite might someday get well, make a big comeback, and land him on Easy Street. Poor sucker."

I stood up. "Can you give me the name and address of the hospital where Favorite is a patient?"

"Ask my secretary. She must have it tucked away someplace."

I thanked him for his time and left. In the outer office I went through the motions of having the receptionist locate and write down the address of the Emma Dodd Harvest Memorial Clinic.

"You ever been up to Poughkeepsie?" I asked, tucking the folded slip of paper into my shirt pocket. "It's a lovely town."

"Are you kidding? I never even been to the Bronx."

"Not even to the zoo?"

"The zoo? What do I need with a zoo?"

"I don't know," I said. "Try one on for size some time. Might be a good fit."

My last shot of her as I went out the door was an open red mouth round as a hula hoop framing a shapeless wad of gum atop her pink tongue.

NINE.

There were two bars on the ground floor of the Brill Building, facing Broadway on either side of the entrance. One was Jack Dempsey's, watering hole for the prizefight crowd. The other, the Turf, on the corner of 49th, was a hangout for musicians and songwriters. Its facade of blue mirrors made it seem as cool and inviting as a grotto in Capri.

Inside, it was just another gin mill. I made a circuit of the bar and found the very man I had in mind, Kenny Pomeroy, an accompanist and arranger since before I was born. "Whaddya say, Kenny," I whispered as I climbed on an adjacent stool.

"Well, well, Harry Angel, the famous shamus. Long time no see, pardner."

"It's been a while. Your glass looks empty, Kenny. Sit still and I'll buy you a refill." I signaled the bartender and ordered a Manhattan and another round for Kenny.

"Skoal, kiddo," he said, lifting his glass when the drinks were set in front of us. Kenny Pomeroy was a bald fat man with a lightbulb nose and a set of chins stacked one on top of the other like replacement parts. His mode of dress ran to hound's-tooth jackets and star sapphire pinkie rings. The only place I'd ever seen him outside of a rehearsal hall was at the bar in the Turf.

We jawed for a bit about old times before Kenny asked: "So what brings you to this end of the street? The pursuit of evildoers?"

"Not exactly," I said. "I'm working on a job you might be able to help me with."

"Anytime, anyplace."

"What can you tell me about Johnny Favorite?"

"Johnny Favorite? Talk about Memory Lane."

"Did you know him?"

"Nah. Caught his act a few times before the war. Last time was at the Starlight Lounge in Trenton, if I remember it right."

"Haven't seen him around anyplace, say in the last fifteen years or so?"

"Are you kidding? He's dead, ain't he?"

"Not exactly. He's in a hospital upstate."

"Well, if he's inna hospital, how am I supposed to see him around?"

"He's been in and out," I said. "Listen, take a look at this." I slid the photo of the Spider Simpson orchestra out of the manila envelope and passed it to him. "Which one of those guys is Simpson? It doesn't say on the picture."

"Simpson's the drummer."

"What's he doing now? Still leading a band?"

"Nah. Drummers never make good front men." Kenny sipped his drink and looked thoughtful, furrowing a brow that ran without interruption onto the top of his head. "Last I heard he was doing studio work out on the Coast. You might try calling Nathan Fishbine in the Capitol Building."

I made a note of the name and asked Kenny if he knew any of the sidemen.

"I worked a gig in Atlantic City with the trombone player once years ago." Kenny pointed a pudgy finger at the photo. "This guy, Red Diffendorf. He's blowing corn with Lawrence Welk now."

"What about any of the others? Know where I can find them?"

"Well, I recognize a lot of the names. They're still in the business, but I can't tell you who with. You'd have to ask around the street, or call the union."

"How about a Negro piano player named Edison Sweet?"

"Toots? He's the greatest. Got a left hand like Art Tatum. Very tasty. You won't have to look far for him. He's been playing uptown at the Red Rooster on 138th Street for the last five years."

"Kenny, you're a fund of useful information. How about some lunch?"

"Never touch the stuff. But I wouldn't say no to one more seven-and-seven."

I ordered us both another drink and a cheeseburger with fries for myself and while waiting I found a pay phone and called Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. I said I was a freelance journalist working on assignment for Look and I wanted to interview the surviving members of the Spider Simpson orchestra.

They connected me with the girl in charge of membership records. I gift-wrapped it by promising to plug the union in my article and gave her the names of the band members on the photo, together with the instruments they played.

I held the line for ten minutes while she looked it up. Of the original fifteen musicians four were deceased and six had been dropped from the union membership rolls. She gave me the addresses and telephone numbers of the others. Diffendorf, the trombonist with Lawrence Welk, lived in Hollywood. Spider Simpson also had a place in the L.A. area, over in the Valley in Studio City. The others were here in town.

There was an alto player named Vernon Hyde in the "Tonight" show house band, address c/o NBC Studios; and two hornmen, Ben Hogarth, trumpet, with an address on Lexington Avenue, and another trombone, Carl Walinski, who lived in Brooklyn.

I got it all down in my notebook, thanked the girl from the bottom of my heart, and called the local numbers without success. The hornmen weren't home, and the best I could do with the switchboard at NBC was leave my office number.

I was beginning to feel like the sucker in a snipe hunt. The guy who waits all night in the woods holding the empty sack. There was less than one chance in a million that any of Johnny Favorite's former bandmates had run across him since he went away to war. These were the only odds in town, and I was stuck with them.

Back at the bar, I ate my sandwich and nibbled a few wilted french fries. "It's a great life, ain't it, Harry," Kenny Pomeroy said, rattling the ice in his empty glass.

"The best and only."

"Some poor stiffs've got to work for their living."

I scooped my change off the bar. "Don't drum me out of the club if I start working for mine."

"You ain't leaving, are you Harry?"

"Got to do it, old friend, much as I'd like to stay and poison my liver with you."