Red Right Hand Read Free Page B

his Crescent Street town house and broke his neck. It was Theo who discovered the body and called it in.
    A year later, Nick’s father, Spiro, took over when Theo was found facedown in his morning yogurt, a bullet in his head. Though there were six people in the house at the time—family members all—and to a one, they claimed to’ve neither seen nor heard a thing.
    Spiro had ruled until three years ago, when a hit-and-run left him in a persistent vegetative state. Nick and his five siblings spent months after his so-called accident jockeying for control of the family. By the time Nick claimed the throne, one of his brothers was dead, and his little sister had fled to points unknown.
    Hendricks imagined Pappas family holidays were pretty tense.
    Jealousy aside, Nick’s remaining siblings had little to complain about; they’d profited mightily with him at the helm. His business acumen had expanded their empire exponentially and elevated the Pappas clan from small-time crooks to major players on the national scene.
    Pappas’s meteoric rise didn’t go unnoticed by New York’s other crime families. Some threatened war, but most saw him as a kindred spirit, which was how he’d wound up the youngest voting member in the history of the Council.
    The Council was a group of representatives from each of the major criminal outfits operating in the United States. Though their organizations were often rivals, Council members convened whenever their respective organizations’ interests aligned.
    Killing Hendricks was one such interest.
    Hendricks’s business model was…unconventional. When someone was marked for death, Hendricks would make sure that person’s would-be killer wound up in the ground instead—so long as the intended victim paid up, that is. Ten times the price on the client’s head was his going rate. Always up front, nonnegotiable.
    His buddy Lester, with whom he’d served in Afghanistan, was the operation’s tech guy. He ID’d the clients and gathered intel on their targets. Hendricks handled the wetwork. For a while, business was booming. Then the Council caught wise and sent a hitman to hit him back. The man they sent—Alexander Engelmann—was tenacious, sadistic, and hard to kill. Hendricks managed to do it, barely, but not before the bastard tortured Lester to death. Ever since, Hendricks had dedicated every waking moment to determining who, exactly, was on the Council so he could take them down.
    But without Lester’s computer chops to rely on, Hendricks was forced to resort to old-fashioned detective work, and leads were scarce. Council members ran tight ships. Their street-level employees were largely kept in the dark, and those in their inner circles knew better than to run their mouths. Those who did usually wound up dead.
    Thankfully, Pappas’s crew was new to this and not as disciplined as they should be. Thirty-six hours into a meth bender, one of his lieutenants blabbed to a call girl he was sweet on. Hendricks had saved that call girl’s life once—she and her first pimp didn’t part on the best of terms, so he’d paid a guy five hundred bucks to take her out—which meant she was more than happy to pass along what she had learned.
    “I guess this is my cue to leave,” Hendricks said to Pappas, knowing damn well that it wasn’t. He’d been watching Pappas for months, trying to figure out how to get close to him. Pappas never went anywhere without his personal security detail. He had several properties he split his time among—a penthouse in midtown Manhattan, the family home in Astoria, freestanding houses in Guilford and Oyster Bay—none of which had his name on the paperwork, and each of which had its own dedicated security staff. He varied his daily routine to avoid ambushes. He wasn’t married. He had no children. His girlfriends were under constant lock and key.
    But a few times a month, he liked to pop into one of his restaurants for a lavish meal.
    Even then, though,