“Wait!” Jack called. He tossed the papers he was holding onto the desk and ran after the taxi driver. He caught up to him on the sidewalk.

“Did you call a taxi, Mr. Papparis?” Yuri asked. He glanced over at his waiting cab. He wanted to get the hell out of there.

“I’m not Mr. Papparis,” Jack said. He pulled off his latex gloves and struggled to get out his medical examiner badge.

He showed it to Yuri, who backed up another step. Yuri thought it was a police badge.

“The name’s Jack Stapleton; I’m a medical examiner,” Jack said. He put away his wallet, then undid his face mask. “How well did you know Mr. Papparis? Did you drive him often?”

“I’m just a cab driver,” Yuri said meekly. He wasn’t sure what a medical examiner was, although with an official badge he obviously worked for the government.

“How well did you know Mr. Papparis?” Jack repeated.

“I didn’t know him,” Yuri said. “I never drove him.”

“How did you know his name?”

“I just got a call to pick him up.”

“That’s interesting,” Jack said.

Yuri felt distinctly uncomfortable. He did not like dealing with state officials of any kind. Besides, the individual standing in front of him looked vaguely familiar, a fact that added to his unease. And on top of that the stranger was looking at him curiously, even suspiciously.

“Are you sure you got a call from a Mr. Papparis on Walker Street?” Jack said. “Mr. Papparis of the Corinthian Rug Company?”

“I think that’s what dispatch said,” Yuri said.

“I find that hard to believe,” Jack said. “Mr. Papparis died over the weekend.”

“Oh!” Yuri said. He coughed nervously while he struggled to come up with some plausible explanation. Nothing came to mind.

“Maybe he called last week?” Jack suggested.

“That could be,” Yuri said.

“Maybe we should call your cab company,” Jack suggested. “It would be helpful to know if Mr. Papparis was a regular customer. You see, he died of a rare infectious disease which I’m eager to investigate. Any information I could find out about his activities last week such as whether he visited his warehouse could be important. I’m also interested in contacts. Especially last week and particularly Friday.”

“I can give you the dispatch phone number,” Yuri said.

“Fair enough,” Jack said. “Let me get a pencil and a piece of paper.”

While Jack ducked back into the rug company office, Yuri breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment he thought that he’d made a terrible blunder coming to the rug company’s office. Now he was confident there wouldn’t be a problem. Dispatch wouldn’t offer any information. They never did, especially not about yellow cabs.

Jack returned in a moment and wrote down the name and number.

“What kind of disease did Mr. Papparis die of?” Yuri asked. He was curious what the authorities knew or suspected.

“A disease called anthrax,” Jack said.

“I know something about that,” Yuri said. “It’s a disease mostly of cattle.”