One might not have expected a cop to be superstitious. And in truth, I really wasn't. But the fact remained that some things were too strange not to have something to do with that sort of thing, and so I said nothing, but continued to watch. My youngest daughter found herself caught up in the whole 'lucky numbers' thing, and asked me what I thought mine was, if I even thought I had one. And almost without thinking, I told her it was four.
After she ran off to answer the phone before her mother could, presumably because it was some boy she didn't want either of her parents knowing about, I found myself thinking about that answer, and what it meant. She, of course, more than likely thought that the number was random, something I'd told her to make me leave her alone, even though I had the feeling she'd be back after that phone call, asking if she could go out and do something. I myself was inclined to let her, if only to give myself time to think this over, but depended on her mother, and I would tell her so when she came to ask.
With this in mind, I went back to thinking about the answer I had given, and the meaning behind it, if there was even really a meaning. But there was. And I knew that if I hadn't figured it out by the time I finally managed to drift off to sleep, it would probably hit me when I least expected it. I wasn't surprised to find myself determined to figure it out before that happened, and knew I'd probably sit where I was for the rest of the night, until I finally had an answer, or rather, some semblance of an answer.
Four was a number that one probably wouldn't have thought of off of the top of their head. In truth, though my daughter probably thought the answer came rather quickly, but I'd actually had to think before saying something to her. And as it turned out, four was the number that I found myself thinking of more often than not. The reason for this was simple: I was the captain of a squad, and the squad had four primary detectives…four who had a penchant for getting into things that they couldn't always back out of on their own.
This number could also be divided into two sets of two: two sets of partners that would always have each others' backs, no matter what happened. Bending the rules wasn't something new to either set, but they, unlike I, were not afraid of doing so to get the results they needed, hence their solve rate. The brass complained, yes, but only to keep up appearances: there was no denying that the Major Case Squad did good work, and if they thought I was giving my detectives too free a reign over themselves, that was their problem. I gave my detectives what they needed to get the job done; they knew it, and so did everyone else.
But even though four was a number divisible by two, my four detectives were not divisible, and this was something else that the department knew. Things had been cordial between the two sets of partners at first, but after a while, they became friends. They were a lot closer to each other than any other set of four detectives that I had seen, and where other sets tended to leave their commanding officers out of this so-called loop, I found myself somehow having been pushed into the middle of theirs. It was a comforting feeling, knowing that they trusted me enough to let me into their personal lives, the same way I let them into mine. It wasn't anything that the department could have called inappropriate, and there was certainly nothing wrong with detectives being on friendly terms with whoever their CO happened to be.
But I noticed that no other set of four happened to be as close to theirs as my own were to me, and though some might have found this odd, I didn't. There were, I thought as I sat there, certain squads that tended to be closer than other squads happened to be. Vice and Narcotics were two of those squads. I had, once upon a time, found myself in Narcotics, and had been surprised when they'd sent one of the old faces from the lineup that had been mine into Major Case a while after they'd sent me in. By then, I had one of the old faces from Vice, as well, and as it turned out, the two of them made better partners than anyone might have expected.
These two were half of the lucky number. The department called one an oddball and the other conventional, but there was no denying their solve rate, and the skill they had in breaking cases that anyone else might've seen as impossible to break. The two of them were certainly something else, and had been through plenty, both together and on their own, but there they were every morning when I finally managed to make it into Manhattan from Queens, and there they would be until the department split them up. But I doubted that was going to happen anytime soon. There was no denying that the two of them were a perfect fit, both professionally…and personally.
The other two, I hadn't known for as long, but they were still part of the equation. The first was a former Homicide detective, once disgraced but now given a second chance, if only by my hand, something I chose to ignore once I saw the work he did. He could have easily returned to Manhattan's precincts on his own merit, but the brass were too blind to see it. The second had risen through the ranks of the NYPD only to be taken away by the Feds for a short period of time. She, too, had come back, though on her own merit. And where anyone else in the department might've considered this an odd pairing, it was one that worked, and that was all that mattered to me.
I realized at this point that I had been trying to figure out if there was another number that I could consider my lucky one, but I couldn't. There was no other number, and somehow, bumping it up to five seemed wrong. The four of them had the sort of bond that I had with three others that had once been detectives alongside me, but were now captains, the same way I was. They did the sort of work I had once found myself doing, and they did it well. They were willing to defend me, the same way I was willing to defend them, and in short…we had somehow turned from being a squad to being a family, and it wasn't something I could really say for any other squad out there.
It was Angie's hand waving in front of my face that caught my attention and brought me back to reality as she came to sit down beside me, shaking her head.
"I've never seen you so focused on a wall before," she remarked dryly, obviously trying not to laugh. "What's on your mind?"
I offered up a faint smile and slid my arm around her waist as she reached for the remote.
"Nothing," I replied. "Just thinking about my lucky number."