They teased Detective Paul Martin about his hair color - still black after working the streets of Roxbury’s Area B-2 for the past 40 years.

They offered their best imitations of his gruff, sandpaper voice - one that never shied away from barking out opinions directly in the face of a boss or a prosecutor.

And they jammed into a Mattapan union hall one night last week to honor the brave and generous heart of a 65-year-old detective who not only made them better cops . . . but better people.

“Paul Martin made a helluva lot of bosses on this job look good over the years,” said night supervisor Capt. Jack Gifford. “A good man, a terrific detective.”

A trio of those bosses, Superintendent-in-Chief Danny Linskey, along with fellow superintendents Bruce Holloway and Bobby Myrna, paid homage to the mentor who taught them what smart policing was all about, but never wanted to follow them up the career ladder.

“We knew if we made rank they’d take us off the street and move us someplace else,” said Joe Pishkin, who spent all of his 39 years in Roxbury with Martin and fellow gold shield sages, Walter Warner and Billy DeMille.

“It’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it,” Pishkin added, “but the camaraderie, the sense of togetherness you have in B-2 is special. You know people will always have your back, everyone one of us is going to be there for each other. For guys like Paul and myself, that’s what made the job. You just don’t want to let it go.”

Tom Menino acknowledged not knowing Paul Martin well, but he understood the eclectic mix of cops surrounding him - black, white, Asian, male and female, old and young - represented what the mayor called “real cops.”

Indeed, they were point-of-purchase, frontline cops, the ones who make the cases but not the headlines. And much like the man who showed them the ropes, it’s how they prefer to operate.

“Don’t be fooled by the gruffness,” Capt. Frank Armstrong of E-18 was saying. “Just below the surface is a very caring heart. The reason why Paul was so effective on the street is that like Joe, Walter and Billy, he always treated people with respect. Whenever possible, he believed in the power of giving people a break. It paid dividends. Those guys, between them, put in about 120 years in B-2 and had a million street sources.”

“Paul understood that people were all the same,” said his wife, Rosemary. “Maybe it came from growing up in the Archdale projects, but he never saw color, he only saw people as part of a family, those he worked with, those he protected as well as those he was chasing.”

One day after Paul Martin officially retired, he was on an operating table at MGH, where doctors worked to stave off an aggressive cancer. In eight days, he will undergo another operation.

“My husband has a saying,” said Rosemary, “ ‘It is what it is. I’m gonna leave things in God’s hands.’ Paul’s a warrior,” said the former Victoria Diner waitress who fell in love with the cop who was always running out to answer the next call. “He will fight this with everything he’s got. You can bet on it.”