The Prophet Motive Read Online Free PDF Page A

buying wine from a store. But she couldn’t help worrying about her ignorance of the latest youth lingo. Marilyn hadn’t known much of it even as a real youth. She’d been a nerd all her life.
    At least she no longer worried about her disguise. In creating one for herself, the team of cops she was supposed to be working with hadn’t been too helpful—none of them really wanted her involved in the undercover operation, least of all John Richetti—but this morning she’d enlisted the aid of a ring-nosed street teen with scum green hair, nicknamed Chlorine, who’d given Marilyn a stark make-over—or make-ugly , as Chlorine had called it.
    The make-ugly had cost her the beauty salon-like price of one hundred and twenty dollars. What little remained of her blonde tresses had been snipped into a catastrophe of points and knots and snaking bare skull—the preferred coiffure of the young, the alienated, the high, and the destitute. For another fifty bucks, Chlorine’s transvestite friend, Big O, had sold Marilyn a soiled, ratty Tee shirt—emblazoned with the word, Greenpeace —and a smelly canvass backpack with a broken zipper.
    On the sidewalk, just up ahead, a small crowd had gathered to listen to a female guitarist singing a Grateful Dead song with a Euro-accent.
    Truck-ink . . . down to New Orleans
    Truck-ink . . .
    Marilyn halted, seeking a path to slither her lean, Amazonian frame through the crowd. A hand gripped her upper arm.
    Turning, she confronted an aged female face, sunburnt, with grime highlighting every line, a face like an antique mosaic.
    “What are you up to?” demanded the old woman, her breath as foul as the air above a freshly churned garbage disposal.
    Marilyn recoiled. “I beg your pardon?” She reached for her purse, expecting to be accosted for spare change.
    “I seen you pass by here all day today,” the old woman said. “Again ’n again ’n again.”
    “I’m afraid you’ve—you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
    The old woman shook her head in disagreement. “Ungh-ungh. I seen you, seen you all day.” She leaned in closer. “What sort of trouble you in, anyway? You a runaway?”
    “I’m not in any kind of trouble, and I’m not a runaway. If you’ll excuse me—”
    “Be straight with me, now,” the old woman said, roughly cupping Marilyn’s cheek. “I can sense trouble, and you . . . you got it, child. Better come on over.”
    The old woman moved toward a rickety card table set against the building wall, one folding metal chair on each side. On top of the table stood a glass jar of cash and a neat fan of tarot cards. “We’ll see now,” said the fortune-teller, “see what fate has in store for you.”
    But Marilyn would have no more to do with her. Without another word, she turned and mixed into the crowd. The fortune-teller called after her.
    “Hey you! Come back here!”
    Marilyn sped half a block, then jaywalked across the intersection, a twinge of panic in her chest. Superstition, although officially banished to the innermost recesses of her highly educated brain, had made one of its periodic returns from exile. What if the fortune-teller is a bad omen ?
    She shook off the notion—more or less—only to be overtaken by self-doubt, and she wrenched to a stop on the sidewalk. Is this a mistake? Will I be out of my depth working an undercover homicide investigation? And what about this John Richetti? Will I be safe with a partner like that ?
    The night before, she’d made a surprise visit to his condominium, slipping by him in the doorway—him and his tinkling glass of scotch on the rocks—before a word had been spoken. He’d been wearing his work clothes still, only with the shirttail out.
    “Stopped by your house,” she’d said as she swiftly circumnavigated the living room, scanning everything in sight from floor to ceiling, sniffing the air. “Only you don’t live there anymore, turns out.”
    This was no typical bachelor pad—no dirty laundry