Devlin knew about accents. In his early years in A.A., standing before groups everywhere in the Northeast from Maryland to Maine, responding to remarks about his own big-city speech, he had worked up a routine that had put people at ease with the way he seemed to mangle the language. Devlin had imitated five immigrants yelling at each other on a noisy Lower East Side street corner at the turn of the century—Irish, Italian, and Jewish, with German and Russian thrown in. In about a minute, with commentary, Devlin had boiled the accents down to the raw edge New Yorkers have in their speech today, and he finished by showing how the accent changed from borough, neighborhood to neighborhood, and one occupation to the next. A police sergeant never moved his lips when he talked and neither did a nun, but they didn’t sound alike; a garment district worker didn’t shout in the same way as an Aqueduct railbird. Devlin used to do this routine, reminding the audience that New York was loud and getting louder: the old street corner was not as loud as today’s Fifth Avenue, for instance. Devlin’s partner, John Lord, who had never seen the bit, thought there might be some truth to Devlin’s theory, but Devlin didn’t know or care. He had been manic for years after getting sober, speaking four and five times a week, proudly calculating the miles traveled. The whole period was something he had had to work through. Now Devlin thought—hoped—he was as different from the guy who had wanted to prove he was sober as that guy had hoped he was different from the jerk who had spent almost fifteen years trying to prove he could drink. Devlin’s sense of humor had survived, but now it was dark, mordant, too cutting at times for squares. He rarely did celebrity voices anymore, Bogart, Cagney, or his own favorite, Randolph Scott singing “Take the A Train.” Years ago, Devlin had been celebrated as a man who could mimic practically anybody. Early this year, when Queens Borough President Donnie Manes finally succeeded in killing himself, Devlin had shouted in the voice of Mayor Hamilton, “I won the pool! I won the pool!”—a crack lost on noncops, but a howl to the burned-out bulls for whom it had been intended. They knew that once a guy starts trying to kill himself, he usually doesn’t stop until he’s overwhelmed by success. Every old cop knew that the meter had started ticking on Manes weeks before he had actually done the job. And they didn’t care, for it was a fitting end to a common, greedy little thief.