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on his adding machine.
    The Times Building on 43rd Street was just around the corner. I walked there, feeling prosperous, and took the elevator to the newsroom on the third floor after exchanging frowns with the statue of Adolph Ochs in the marble lobby. I gave Walt’s name to the old man at the reception desk and waited a minute or so until he appeared from the back in shirt sleeves with his necktie loosened, like a reporter in the movies.
    We shook hands and he led me into the newsroom where a hundred typewriters filled the cigarette haze with their staccato rhythms.
    “This place has been gloomy as hell,” Walt said, “ever since Mike Berger died last month.” He nodded at an empty desk in the front row where a wilted red rose stood in a glass of water on the shrouded typewriter.
    I followed him through the clatter of the rewrite bank to his desk in the middle of the room. A fat manila folder sat in the top wire basket of the desk tray. I picked it up and glanced at the yellowed clippings inside. “Okay if I hang onto some of this stuff?” I asked.
    “House rules say no.” Walt hooked a forefinger into the collar of the worsted jacket draped over the back of his swivel chair. “I’m going out to lunch. There’s some 8-by-12 envelopes in the bottom drawer. Try not to lose anything and my conscience’ll be clean.”
    “Thanks, Walt. If I can ever do you a favor —”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah! For a guy who reads the Journal-American you come to the right place for your research.”
    I watched him slouch between the rows of desks, trading wisecracks with the other reporters and waving to one of the editors in the bullpen on his way out. Seated at his desk, I had a look through the Johnny Favorite folder.
    Most of the old clippings were not from the Times , but from other New York dailies and a selection of national magazines. Mainly, they were about Favorite’s appearances with the Spider Simpson band. A few were feature stories, and I read through these with care.
    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