"You spiked their coffee?"
"I did not. This is USPS-issue coffee rations, laid in for psychological contingencies on orders from the PG himself." He lowered his voice. "Never thought I'd have to deploy it, though."
"What's it doing to them?"
"Prozac raises the serotonin levels."
"What's serotonin?" asked Remo.
"Some kind of soothing chemical produced in the brain, as I hear it. I'm exempt from drinking the stuff. Someone's gotta keep a clear head."
Evidently they were overheard, because one of the postal workers started to improvise a little ditty. "Serotonin, Serotonin, Dormez-vous, Dormez-vous?" The others joined in.
"Sonnez tes matines!
Sonnez les matines!
Mailman mood.
Mailman mood."
As they launched into their second chorus, Remo pulled out the blank FBI picture of Yusef Gamal and said, "We need you to fill in the blanks on this guy."
"You got the hat right. In fact, it's perfect."
"Thanks," Remo said dryly. "What about the face?"
"Joe only worked here about a year, all told. I don't remember the color of his eyes. Not sure about his hair. He had a pretty ordinary mouth, too."
"In other words, nada."
"Well, he did have what you'd call a pronounced beak. Not like this one here, though."
"Like a falcon or an eagle?" squeaked Chiun.
"More like a camel, actually. It wasn't sharp. It was more bulbous."
From a sleeve of his kimono, the Master of Sinanju extracted a folded sheet of paper, unfolded it delicately and held it up to the postal manager's eyes. "Such as this?" he asked.
"You know, I never noticed the resemblance before, but that's a right good one. Except for skin color. He was pretty white."
"What's this?" asked Remo, stepping around. Chiun directed the fluttering sheet of colored paper toward him. It was a cigarette ad, Remo saw. He blinked. Then blinked again.
"He looked like Joe Camel?" Remo blurted.
"Yes. More or less."
"What do you mean, more or less?"
"More the nose, less everything else."
"You had a postal worker named Joe Camel who looked like the cigarette character Joe Camel, and when the FBI asked you and your people to describe him all you came up with was a cap?"
"The PG asked us to cooperate as narrowly as possible."
"Let me ask you something. Did this Joe Camel look Middle Eastern or talk with an accent?"
"Sure, he talked funny. He was from New Jersey. They all talk funny out that way."
"But did he look Middle Eastern?"
"No, he looked Jewish. But so do a lot of folks from Jersey."
"Spoken like an Okie from Muskogee," said Remo. "What happens when they find Camel?"
"Not my concern. They always find these canceled stamps with a gun in their mouths. My job is to keep the others from going berserk."
Remo eyed the still-singing postal workers. They were doing a barbershop-quartet rendition of "Please, Mr. Postman" that got so hopelessly mangled in the third verse they gave up and picked up "Take a Letter, Maria" in midchorus.
"Hardly any chance of that now," Remo commented.
"Thank God."
"Getting the mail out will be interesting," added Remo, watching a mail sorter dive in a canvas-sided mail cart and start snoring "The Serotonin Song."
"Mail? We can always deliver the mail somewhere down the road. Preserving service cohesion is the priority today."
"Where does Gamal live?" Remo asked the postal manager.
"Over in Moore. You can't miss the place. FBI has it staked out like an anthill."
"Thanks," said Remo, walking out to the strains of "Message from Michael" as paper airplanes made from undelivered mail crisscrossed the air.
OUTSIDE they were followed by Tamayo Tanaka, who demanded, "What did you find out?"
"Prozac is good for the nerves," grunted Remo.
"I take Zoloft," Tamayo said, "It's great. Not only do I wake up humming, but I have daily bowel movements."
"Good for you."
"Begone, rice-for-brains. We are busy," said Chiun. "We could share information."
"What makes you think we have information?"
"You guys are up to something. I can smell intrigue a mile away. Let's pool our facts."
"You first," said Chiun.
"Postal workers go nuts in two states. It's the beginning of the psychological disintegration of the whole postal system."
"What makes you say that?"
"I'm a psycho-journalist. Dual major. Psychology and communications, with a minor in cultural anthropology."
"Sounds like a career strategy," Remo said. Tamayo yanked a green-covered book from her big hag.
"This is your basic psychiatric-case-study book. Tells everything you need to know about any kind of psychotic and how to diagnose him. With this, I was able to discover the deepest, darkest secrets of the postal service."
They looked at her.
"It's just riddled with psychotics," hissed Tamayo.
"Where do you get that?" demanded Remo.
"From this book. According to this, psychotics are drawn to regimented and highly structured environments. Like the police, the military and the post office."
"Yeah?"
"These guys all look, act and behave normally. Until you hit their specific area of paranoia. Then they go off. We psych majors call them land-mine personalities because they suffer from explosive personality disorder. Say an ordinary postal worker is on his rounds and he keeps stepping in dog pooh. It can happen once in a blue moon, and he'd be okay. But when it happens every week over three months, then, say, every two weeks, and then one day he steps in two different dog turds. Snap! Just like that, he suffers a psychotic break. Completely decompensates. Grabs up his trusty shotgun and blows away all his coworkers."
"Why not shoot dogs?" Remo wondered aloud.
"Because he's a postal worker, and once they go off, all rationality flies out the window. Don't you watch the news?"
"Sounds farfetched," said Remo, looking around for a pay phone.
"Did you know that Son of Sam was a postal worker?"
"I think I heard that."
"And that creepy fat guy on 'Seinfeld,' he's a postal worker, too."
"That isn't reality."
"And Son of Sam was? The man took his orders from a dog that wasn't even his. Think of it. The way they run the postal service these days, they're practically breeding Son of Sams. If America doesn't get a grip on the mail system, we could all be massacred. Is that a story or what?"
"It's a load of crap."
"Yes," said Chiun, "it is bullock manure. You are speaking idiocy. None of these things explain what has happened."
"Then you explain it," retorted Tamayo.
"Muhammadans have-"
"Don't say it, Chiun-" Remo warned.
"-infiltrated the post office."
"Muhammadans? What are they?"
"For us to know and you to find out," said Remo, pulling the Master of Sinanju away.
Down the street, Remo found a pay phone. "Did you have to spill the beans?" he complained.
Chiun composed his expression. "They are true beans. Why should I not spill them?"
"We don't want her to cause a nationwide panic by going on the air with that story."
"Why would Muhammadans cause more panic than gruntless mailmen?"
"Actually it might cause less," Remo admitted. "But we don't want to blow our investigation." Dialing Folcroft, Remo got Smith on the line. "Smitty, you'll never believe this. The local post office is feeding its employees Prozac to calm them down. They got the walls painted pink, too. And we know how that works."
"What about Joe Camel?" asked Smith.
"Can your computers take that blank face and superimpose another? Kinda morph them into a human face?"
"Yes."
"Good. Take one of those Joe Camel cigarette ads, paste the camel's face into the blank spot, then try to make him look as human as you can"