Deleting one record from a table taking 17s.

Why would the following query take soo long to run? What does 28.12 msec represent, since the total running time is
16801.86 ms.

The table phoneinfo has a primary key called phoneinfo_id and the table has 400 000 records.

mydb=#explain analyze delete from phoneinfo where phoneinfo_id = 85723;

                                                         QUERY PLAN

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
  Index Scan using phoneinfo_pkey on phoneinfo  (cost=0.00..3.81 rows=1 width=6) (actual time=27.93..27.94 rows=1 loop
s=1)
    Index Cond: (phoneinfo_id = 85723)
  Total runtime: 28.12 msec
(3 rows)

Time: 16801.86 ms

BTW, I have \timing on.