After the flames were extinguished Sunday night, firefighters made the discovery: a body, deep in an abandoned crew room, in a subway tunnel on the F line just north of 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

The victim was obviously homeless. Less apparent were his circumstances and history, but it did not take long for those to emerge. Of all the homeless people in the subway, the victim, Anthony Horton, 43, had been among the least faceless.

Mr. Horton found solace in the blackness of the tunnels. He made the subway the subject of his canvases, the muse for a graphic novel that he co-wrote, and the place he called home for the better part of his adult life, even when he had other places to stay.

When he emerged aboveground, his friends said, he spoke with a rich gravelly voice, he drummed on the tops of mailboxes and improvised songs inspired by the 1970s tunes of Luther Vandross, and when he saw a friend, he would deliver a bear hug that pulsed with warmth.