The Price of Blood

open hand swatted thin air. She rebounded like a piston and forked a rigid arc formed by her right thumb and the knuckle of her index finger up under Earl’s chin. Earl instinctively tucked his neck into his hunched shoulders. The force of Nina’s blow was absorbed in the powerful tendons of his neck, not the vulnerable throat.

Tires squealed and the reek of burning rubber torched in from the street; car doors slammed and the back door slammed. They were coming in with all their usual tact of bull elephants. Andy went past Broker running for the kitchen and Broker went for Earl who now had his hands on Nina.

Andy screamed when he saw a tall black man, whom God had made without a waist, so that his pumping hips and thighs jointed in a power train to his ribs, doing a hundred-yard dash across Broker’s grubby kitchen straight at him.

St. Paul Det. Jarrel “T-Bone” Merryweather was pure onyx black and his shirt was an ivory off white and his tie of expensive silk. J.T. came on screaming at the top of his ex-drill-sergeant lungs, managing to smile at the same time because he really ate this shit up. J.T. didn’t take the time to vest up because he knew there was only one way to get through a door, which was first and fastest, because Broker had taught him how to do it. He held a 12-gauge Remington riot pump steady before him with the muzzle gaping like an open onrushing manhole straight to Redneck Hell: “Freeze-you fuckin’ piece of shit-I’ll blow your mother-fuckin’ head loose from your fat cracker ass!”

Broker heard a groan as Andy collapsed to his knees and somewhere Tabor was yelling how he wanted to see his lawyer and other people were in the room giving Andy his rights but he was giving his full attention to Earl and Nina was getting in the way trying to step in and kick Earl and catching Broker in the ribs a couple of times and Earl had this confused little boy lost look in his eyes as his cheeks popped like chicken bones because he’d strayed too far from home in Alabama, and-ha, mother fucker-Brokers from Minnesota had met Alabamians before, in July 1863, at a place called Cemetery Ridge and, like his ancestors before him, Earl had come too far north and walked into the remorselessly moving parts of Det. Lt. Phillip Broker of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

But then Earl rallied and, with an insane red-and-gray bloodshot flapping in his eyes, surprised Broker by clamping the edge of Broker’s left thumb in his teeth, as he mashed down and Broker felt the teeth sink into the skin, the muscle, and the bone of the top joint.

Earl’s jaw muscles pulsated through the blood running down his face and Broker screamed when J.T. butt- stroked Earl with the 12-gauge to make him let go. The jarring pain traveled-electric, incandescent-up his arm.

“Don’t,” screamed Broker.

Earl wouldn’t let go. He growled even though he was covered with cops grabbing at him, and his neck and jaw continued to surge, leathery and lethal as some damn snapping turtle.

Five pairs of hands searched for a hold on Earl’s face. Fingers clawed in his nostrils, yanking back, while Earl growled and shook his head and Broker screamed.

Procedure went to hell in the bizarre circumstance. “Phil, don’t move,” shouted Ed Ryan, the ATF agent in charge. “Grab that fucker’s head. Stabilize it. Don’t let him shake like that, he’ll bite it off.”

Somebody in a vest and black cap was cuffing Nina.

“J.T., keep her close,” Broker yelled, rolling his eyes toward Nina, and Merryweather, who’d been taping the caper off the wire in Broker’s pager, pushed the officer away from Nina and took the guy aside, explaining. And Broker was sure that the terrible crunching sound that he heard with his ears, but also was hearing inside his body traveling up his arm, was his thumb being bitten off.

A dozen officers, Robocopped in black body armor, bore down in a twenty-four-handed grab-ass all over Earl who continued to growl and tried to thrash. They sought leverage on the bulging muscles of Earl’s neck and jaw, experimentally jabbed him in the eyes; one guy had a wooden spatula from the kitchen and was trying to pry between Earl’s teeth. Earl had these serious teeth. The spatula broke.

“Man will not let go. I’m gonna have to cap the sucker,” said J.T. Merryweather loudly for effect, resigned, dubiously setting down the shotgun and drawing his pistol.

“You can’t shoot a guy for biting somebody,” a voice yelled.

“Hell I can’t, he’s attacking an officer. Just shoot him a little bit, to make him stop.”

A woman deputy from Dakota County wondered aloud, academically, “Where exactly would you shoot him?”

Sweat poured into Broker’s eyes. The pain was incredible, immobilizing, and it was just a thumb.

Several paramedics pushed through the house, which was now crawling with men and women wearing badges and armed to the teeth and the Washington County SWAT team was there and they were all pumped up on adrenaline and the smell of sweat and fresh blood and everybody was talking at once and the radios were crackling.

And voices. “Who’s the chick? What’s she doing here?”

And “Secure that money on the floor.”

And Nina. “That’s mine.”

Broker floated in an excruciating fog, wrapped in fiery cotton candy that dripped sticky red from the mangled knuckle that was locked in Earl’s jaws. Somebody blurted on a radio, “No shit, one of the assholes bit off Broker’s thumb.”

They eased him off his knees to the floor so that Earl, stretched out like an alligator, lay between Broker’s spread legs, breathing in short snorts, with worms of snot crawling on his upper lip. His face had turned a demented purple and orange with some parts showing through the blood a horrible fish-belly white and the engorged veins popped out on the twisted crimson cables of his neck muscles.

“Got a doctor coming,” yelled a medic. His cohorts quickly took wood splints from their bags and jammed them between Earl’s teeth. As they worked, Broker noticed the contents of Nina’s purse, which lay scattered beneath him. He reached down with his good hand for the pack of Gauloises. Like the cognac, her father’s brand. He found the lighter in her purse and lit it. Despite the pain, the bright pink airsacs in his lungs collected in a happy banzai charge and ran straight for the nicotine.

The medics carried on in awed, too-loud voices. A spirited professional discussion about the problem Earl presented.

“I’ve read about this, surge of adrenaline, ancient survival mechanisms-”

“Strongest muscle group in the body-”

“Stuck together. I thought that meant intervaginally?”

“Bad joke. Bad joke.”

They had worked the splints between Earl’s teeth to buy Broker time but debated that they couldn’t pry the jaws apart without risking a surge that would take Broker’s thumb with it.

A medic shouted into an emergency radio. “We can’t bring him in. They’re attached. Sure we’re trying to keep him calm…whad’ya mean, don’t let him wander around. He’s not in shock, he’s fucking being eaten.”

The medic handed off the radio and knelt beside Broker. “Okay. It’s a tricky one so the doctor’s coming with a shot. We gotta keep his neck immobilized, we’ve stabilized the biting pressure, but if he gets to whipping his head around…Hey, the guy’s got serious neck muscles.” Another medic, a husky blonde wearing a Washington County Paramedic jacket, narrowed her eyes at Broker. “You shouldn’t be smoking,” she lectured, just like a good Minnesotan.

“Fuck you! Get him offa my hand!”

Nina was there, watching him. Broker peered into her merry, adrenaline-drunk, gray eyes. Speckled blood blended naturally with her freckles. A slight bruise darkened her left cheekbone. She stifled an absurd laugh.

“What?” Broker demanded.

“I can’t help it,” she sputtered. “It’s…” She glanced at the spectacle of Earl trying to eat the thumb. “Just too weird.” She broke into contagious laughter.

“Don’t,” gasped Broker. “It hurts when I laugh.” The insane hilarity subsided and he drilled her with tormented eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Nina shrugged. “You said if I ever needed help I should come to you. Well, here I am.”

Broker groaned. Earl’s lips curled back and his teeth gleamed, socketed in Broker’s blood-his eyes were pure