Warren Murphy: Angry White Mailmen

He found the man who had lost his leg around the corner. A black man. He sat up against a building facade looking down at his missing leg. Guiterrez could tell he was seeing what had happened to him but he wasn't getting it. Not yet. Then without warning, he did. He let out a bellow like a wounded bear.

Guiterrez was barking into his shoulder radio. "Central, send X-ray and fire apparatus. Corner of Eighth and Thirty-fourth."

The Dodge pickup was on fire. The driver behind the wheel didn't have any head. He didn't have much of anything from the shoulders down. A monster might have taken a bite out of him.

If it was a car bomb that had done this, Guiterrez realized, it wasn't the pickup.

Other cars were shattered and broken. One was flung over on its side.

Whatever the bomb was, it had been big.

But it wasn't a car bomb. Guiterrez had seen plenty of car-bomb footage on TV. They usually left a smoking axle. Maybe not where it should have been, but it always landed somewhere.

No cars had blown up. Guiterrez was positive of that.

As the wail of sirens started up, Guiterrez went from car to car, checking for dead and wounded, wondering what had blown up. What on earth had blown up? He should have seen it when he turned the corner. The corner had been ground zero. But try as he might, he couldn't remember anything sitting on that corner.

At least, nothing that stood out. And Tony Guiterrez prided himself on his powers of observation.

THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES for Manhattan's bomb squad took him aside an hour later and asked, "What did you see?"

They were on ground zero. The crater on the corner still smoked lazily. Blood and glass lay everywhere. Building facades at all four corners showed scars.

Guiterrez was staring at the crater. It had disrupted the entire corner, flinging granite curbstones like bricks. One had been discovered on the smashed remains of a desk in a second-floor office on the other side of Thirty-fourth.

"There was something there... " he muttered.

"What?"

Guiterrez banged his forehead in frustration. "I don't know. Damn."

"A package?"

"No."

"A suspicious person?"

"Only the injured. Unless someone came out of a building. But he wouldn't have time to drop a bomb and get away intact."

The detective frowned at the crater. "Whatever blew up, it was big. Too big to carry. Too big to escape notice."

"I walked this beat every day for three years," Guiterrez was saying in frustration. "I know this corner. There was something there."

"Something out of the ordinary?"

"No," Guiterrez said dazedly. "Something that's always been there. I just can't remember what it was."

"How can something be there and you can't remember it?"

"It was something ordinary. Something you take for granted."

The bomb-squad detective was looking around. A lone EMT ambulance stood nearby, in case an unsuspected body turned up. A fire engine was pulling away, its job done. The air smelled of hot metals and warm blood.

"What color?" asked the detective.

"I don't remember that, either. Damn it, why won't my mind work?"

"Was it green?"

"Huh?"

The detective was on his knees. He waved Guiterrez to join him.

Near the pediment of a door, something had chipped at the concrete. A fragment lay on the ground. It was scorched black, but as the detective nudged it with a pen, the other side came to light. It was olive drab.

"Could be military ordnance of some type," the detective was saying.

Guiterrez shook his head slowly. "I don't remember anything military."

"A jeep? A duece-and-a-half truck?"

"It wasn't a car bomb, I tell you," Guiterrez said angrily.

The detective got up and looked around. He held the fragment of scorched olive drab metal in a clean handkerchief.

"It wasn't any guy wearing a brace of M-80s for a girdle, either," he said grimly.

AT THE FIFTH AVENUE city morgue, the coroner extracted a large section of steel from the body of the woman whose pureed innards had come bubbling out of her mouth.

Patrolman Guiterrez was there to see it.

The coroner laid the piece of metal on a stainless steel circular tray and with a thing like a tiny flexible shower nozzle, hosed it clean.

As the blood ran clear, the steel turned olive drab. And embossed on one side were two raised letters: U.S.

"Damn," the bomb-squad detective muttered. "Damn. Maybe it was an ammo box. I hope to hell we don't have militia loose in Manhattan."

"We don't," Guiterrez said slowly. "I don't think."

"You recognize it?"

"Yeah. If you search hard enough, you'll find the piece that fits under it. There'll be letters stamped on it, too."

The bomb-squad detective and the ME looked at him expectantly.

"The letters will say 'Mail.' I remember now. The thing that blew up was a US. Mail relay box."

The detective looked as if he wanted to cry. "Did you say a mailbox?"

"Yeah."

"I gotta call the commander. This could be big."

THE COMMISSIONER of police of New York City received the call from the commander of South Precinct Midtown at approximately 12:53.

"It was a mail relay box that blew up," the commander said.

"Damn. Anyone could have planted it, then."

"No, sir, I said a relay box. Not a postal collection box."

"What's the difference?"

"Collection boxes are blue and are for the public convenience. Relay boxes are olive drab and can only be accessed by a postal employee with a key."

"That should narrow it down, shouldn't it?" suggested the commissioner of police.

"It should, sir," the precinct commander agreed.

"So, this isn't a terrorist event?"

"It doesn't appear that way."

"Could be a Unabomber-style mail bomb that detonated prematurely. Or a disgruntled postal worker."

"Is there any other kind?" the commander grunted. The commissioner thought it prudent not to answer that question directly. It was one thing for a commander to indulge in a little gallows humor. A commissioner had to be sober.

"I have a detective interviewing the postmaster," the commissioner said. "All mail is sorted before it's dropped off. We may develop a lead by the evening news, if not sooner."

"Let's hope we don't have a jurisdictional problem."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"The blown box is a federal problem."

"But it blew in a city street. That makes it our investigation."

"Like I said, let's hope we don't have a jurisdictional problem."

NYPD CHIEF OF DETECTIVES Walter Brown walked up the granite steps and through two of the phalanx of Corinthian columns of the General Post Office on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. It was the most impressive building in the entire city that wasn't a skyscraper. It occupied a full city block and looked as solid as the bedrock under Manhattan. Over the lintel was carved the motto of the United States Postal Service:

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom Of Night

Stays These Couriers From The Swift Completion Of Their Appointed Rounds

Inside he was directed to the office of the postmaster of New York City, where he flashed his badge and announced himself.

"Detective Brown. Urgent business."

"One moment," said the secretary. A moment later, Brown was ushered through a door with pebbled glass panel and the words Myron Finkelpearl Postmaster in gilt letters. It was a substantial door, as befitted the office of the man who oversaw the flow of mail through the most important city in the world.

The postmaster waved Brown to a maroon chair. "A half an hour ago," Brown began, "an explosion took place at the corner of Eighth and Thirty-fourth."

"I heard."

"We've determined the object that exploded was one of your relay boxes."

The postmaster turned pale. He actually wove on his feet like a drunken man. Out of his pocket came a white linen handkerchief. He ran it across his forehead, sat down and said, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention."