“Are you sure you don’t want to bet on that anthrax diagnosis?” Jack asked.

“Don’t tell me it was positive?” Calvin leaned back in his chair, and it protested loudly under his weight.

“According to Agnes it was anthrax,” Jack said. “Cultures are pending.”

“Holy crap!” Calvin exclaimed. “This is going to raise some hackles in the Department of Health.”

“Actually I don’t think that’s the case,” Jack said.

“Oh?” Calvin replied. Jack never failed to surprise him. “Why the hell not?”

“Because the disease does not spread person to person, and because it was an occupational exposure limited to the decedent. The source is apparently safely locked up in a warehouse in Queens.”

“I’m all ears,” Calvin said. “Talk to me!”

Jack explained the Corinthian Rug Company connection, and the recent shipment of rugs and goatskins from Turkey. Calvin nodded as Jack spoke.

“Thank the Lord for small favors,” Calvin said. He tipped forward in his chair, and the workings again moaned in complaint. “I’ll have Bingham call Patricia Markham, the Commissioner of Health. Why don’t you phone the city epidemiologist: the one you worked with so closely concerning the plague case. What was his name?”

“Clint Abelard,” Jack said.

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Calvin said. “Give him a call. It will foster that cooperative interagency agenda the mayor’s been harping on.”

“Clint Abelard and I hardly worked closely,” Jack said. “Back then when I tried to call him he wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone.”

“I’m sure he’ll feel differently in light of what eventually transpired,” Calvin said.

“Why not have someone else on our capable staff make the call?” Jack said. “Like one of the janitors.”

“Hold the sarcasm,” Calvin said. “Don’t cause problems! Call the man! Case closed! Now, what about that prisoner death?”

“What do you mean, ‘What about the prisoner death’?” Jack asked. “You saw the blood in the neck muscles and the broken hyoid bone. They had him in a deadly choke hold.”

“What about his brain?” Calvin asked. “Did you find anything?”

“You mean like a temporal lobe tumor,” Jack said. “So we could suggest he’d had a psychomotor seizure that turned him into a raving madman. Sorry! The brain was normal.”

“Do me a favor and look at the histology carefully,” Calvin said. “Find something!”

“This case is in the hands of our happy toxicologist,” Jack said. “Maybe he’ll come up with cocaine or something like that.”

“I want the completed file including death certificate on my desk by Thursday,” Calvin said. “I’ve already got a call from the attorney general’s office.”

“In that case it would help if you gave John DeVries a call,” Jack said. “A request to the lab for a rapid result coming from the front office would have far more import than from a grunt like me.”

“I’ll call John,” Calvin said. “But irrespective of what John comes up with, it’s going to be your job to make sure there’s something in the file that leaves the door open, even if only by a crack.”