Tough Cop. John Roeburt

or the jabbing wilted the opponent, nobody could ever say for sure. One of them, if not both, had won Latimer the bantamweight crown. In losing the title, Latimer lost much of his power of speech. The challenger, a redoubtable puncher who was hard of hearing, shut Latimer up with a crushing blow on the nerve center. From then on, the nickname “Lippy” was more ironic than characterizing.

      Like a great many New Yorkers, Devereaux knew Lippy, and like many of the initiate, he also knew and savored Lippy’s cuisine.

      Devereaux looked at his watch. Well past the dinner hour. Time for a songstress to materialize with the dishes of dessert. He looked at the sidewalk advertisement. The pouting mouth and nippled hills behind gauze were identified as “Sadye, Queen of the Double-Entendre.”

      Devereaux started into the club doubtfully. Anonymity was impossible, here where everybody came to see everybody else, and to be seen. Anonymity was especially impossible for a gadabout detective who’d just completed a twenty-year midtown roving beat and whose face was a front-page commonplace.

      In the vestibule, the checkroom girl smiled brilliantly. “Good evening, Mr. Devereaux.”

      Devereaux kept his hat. The headwaiter’s prop smile seemed a shade more genuine. “Mr. Devereaux.” He bowed.

      Devereaux eluded the headwaiter, then, spotting Phillips, moved quickly around the edge of the club to a position as distant from his quarry’s table as he could get.

      Phillips was huddled in whispered conversation with a companion. A waiter was removing emptied highball glasses and setting down another round. Devereaux felt a moment of surprise when he identified the waiter. Lippy, the owner himself, was doing the honors.

      Lippy moved away, and Devereaux watched the pair, seeking an impression. They seemed steeped in an anxiety that absorbed them both. Was the other man a lawyer, summoned to meet Phillips, advise him? Devereaux considered it, then dismissed it, as he watched the tempo of their exchange mount in intensity. Plainly, from their expressions and manner, the men had a partnership in a problem that threatened them both equally.

      His ruse had worked. The harried Phillips had hurried to a rendezvous. Devereaux studied Phillips’ companion, seeking a mental picture that could be remembered. Middle-aged, close in years to Phillips, ruddy-faced, kempt. There was nothing that distinguished him physically from the run of successful, and perhaps prosperous, executives.

      “Eating or leaving, Devereaux?” The familiar sounds came from behind him. Sounds of speech pushed up from the larynx, without clear articulation.

      Devereaux twisted to face the small, dapper ex-pugilist, and was at once aware of a difference in Lippy’s manner toward him. A warmth and liking for him that he’d always found in Latimer’s eyes wasn’t there, and Devereaux wondered about it.

      “Dropped in to wash my hands, Lippy.” Devereaux winked with the euphemism. “Okay?”

      “Any time,” Lippy said, and punched Devereaux in the stomach in a trade gesture he had never relinquished. “If a guy’s gotta go—” He left the observation unfinished.

      Devereaux went to a passageway that led down a short flight of stairs, puzzled by a feeling he couldn’t shake that Lippy’s eyes were burning into his back.

      He came up from the club washroom with the first notes of Sadye’s song. Lippy was where he had left him, against the far wall, with his eyes trained on the passageway leading to the washroom, like a sentinel on a fixed post.

      Sadye nudged the diners with a melodic innuendo, and held her next lines until the guffaws subsided. Devereaux grinned across the room at Lippy, and joined in a round of applause. Sadye bowed revealingly, then resumed her song.

      Devereaux waved to Lippy and left the club.

      2.

      Outside, and moving with purpose, Devereaux crossed the street, continued on for a few steps, then descended some basement steps to a store. Venetian blinds hid the interior and its activity from passers-by and peekers. Devereaux rapped on the door.

      A girl opened the door warily, then, after identifying him with mild surprise, admitted him.

      Inside, under stark fluorescent lights, the spots of rouge on her raised cheekbones had a lavender tone. She looked tubercular. Except for a couple of spindly chairs and some improvised shelves, the room was unfurnished. There was a scattering of photographic equipment on the shelves. A beaver-board partition in the back divided the small store into two compartments.

      Her face was questioning him. Devereaux motioned her toward the rear. “This couldn’t be a pass, could it?” she said drearily, following him.

      “Nice talk, Pearl,” Devereaux said.

      Pearl picked a box camera with a press photographer’s bulb attachment on it off a shelf. “I gotta go take pictures,” she said.

      The idea of roving camera girls, begun as an experiment a decade earlier, had mushroomed into big business. Operators, located in bare stores strategically central to Manhattan’s numerous Mazda Belts, cajoled, bought, or browbeat photographic concessions from night-club owners. The concessionaire’s investment required a makeshift darkroom geared for speedy delivery of pictures, cameras, and peroxide blondes with a knack for melting consumer resistance. The girls worked on a percentage basis.

      “There’s a picture I want you to take,” Devereaux said.

      “Look, I’m not a policeman’s little helper,” Pearl said.

      Devereaux smiled. Old in her youth, undoubtedly slum-born, and graduate of countless badger games and petty rackets, the girl was smarter than a woman should ever be. He reached into his pocket.

      “For twenty?” Devereaux said.

      She shook her head. “I’ve got twenty,” she said.

      “Sorry, I should have known better.” Devereaux smiled. “How about for a cause?”

      Her brow wrinkled, and the penciled eyebrows lifted. “The guy’s a bad actor,” Devereaux said. “A very bad actor.”

      She shook her head. “Causes never got me.”

      A moment passed, with Devereaux looking futile. “How will I know the guy?” she said suddenly.

      Devereaux brightened. “Two fellows at Table Nine, not far from the bandstand. One’s ruddy-faced, plump-ish, looks like a banker. The second’s pretty well known. Phillips. Martin Phillips, the critic. No doubt you’ve seen him around.”

      “The queen,” she said, curling her lip. “Why doesn’t he go get psychoanalyzed?”

      “On the sly, now,” Devereaux admonished. “Don’t get caught at it.”

      “You kidding?”

      “Don’t mind me. It’s important, and I’m a little anxious.” Devereaux looked gratefully at her. “For the record, kid, why are you suddenly doing it?”

      “For you.”

      “This couldn’t be a pass,” Devereaux smiled.

      “Devereaux, I read your book,” she began mysteriously. “Twenty years a cop. And you never played favorites or took a crooked dollar, it says. So unless you were lying, that makes you Jesus Christ.”

      “Thanks,” Devereaux said.

      She slung the camera over her shoulder. “I like an honest man.” She went to the door. “My father was an honest man.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      1.

      The big hands worked over the neck muscles, then the back, then beat a climactic tattoo along the spine. Devereaux sat up, blinking contentedly with sun spots in his eyes and on his cheeks, then knotted a towel around