Quicksilver(8)

“Plan? Well, just to stay free long enough to figure out why they’re after me. It has to be some kind of mistake, a screwup. I just have to get it straightened out.”

“I said I eat trouble for breakfast, and it’s true. My sister, Maria, she got out of prison, lives with me now until she can get back on her feet. She’s a great lady but can’t cook worth a damn. She insists on sending me to work with a hearty breakfast, so I have bowel trouble all day.” He paused. As he stared down at me, I swear I saw the moment when his sympathy turned to pity. “Maria, before she did what she did, she didn’t have a plan, either.”

The light changed, and we cruised through the intersection.

I said, “What’d she do?”

“To get sent to prison? She mocked a congresswoman by posting several funny memes about her. They said the memes were threats.”

“Were they threats?”

“Yeah—if you think portraying someone as a drunken chipmunk is a threat. Maria did it, but she didn’t have a plan for what might come after. Sentenced to a year, served nine months.”

“Who’d think you’d need a plan for that?”

“Things have changed, Quinn. Before I do or say anything, I have a plan, sometimes two or three plans.”

“How could I know the ISA would decide I was unique? Who has a plan for being accused of uniqueness?”

“All I’m saying is, you better have a plan. You can’t just run forever.”

For maybe two minutes, neither of us spoke. His silence was the silence of pity, and mine was the silence of fear and confusion. My inability to imagine how even to start making a plan so distressed me, I sought to relieve my stress by changing the subject. Pushing up in my seat, I said, “I’ve always wondered why it’s called Dirty Harry Clean Now.”

Juan’s snort was of amused affection for his employer. “First two years that Gi Minh Dai was in the States, he worked three jobs and lived cheap, saving his money to start a dry-cleaning shop. When he finally took time to see a movie, it was the Eastwood film. He loved it. Saw it eight times. Harry wore some cool suits in the movie, and in spite of all the action, he always looked clean and sharply pressed. Gi wondered where Harry took his dry cleaning, and he thought everyone else must wonder, too. At first, he meant to call his shop Gi Minh Dai Dry or Wet, but he went with the other name so the millions of people wondering who was Harry’s dry cleaner might come to Dirty Harry Clean Now. His English wasn’t as good then as it is these days, so he thought the meaning was clear. The funny thing is, it worked. He has three shops and does more dry cleaning and laundry than anyone in Arizona. You understand why it worked?”

I said, “Gi Minh Dai had a plan.”

“Exactly.” Juan pulled to the curb and stopped in front of the six-story parking garage where I’d left my car. “Get a plan, amigo.”

“I will,” I promised. “Somehow, one way or another, I’ll get a plan. Thank you for giving me a lift. I realize now it was a big risk, aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

Juan smiled. He had a warm smile. If it had been any warmer, he could have toasted bread with it. “De nada. Anyway, I had a plan. If some ISA types pulled us over, I’d have taken a pistol from under my seat, shot you dead, then claimed you kidnapped me and I took the weapon away from you.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I said, “Huh.”

Juan’s smile became a wide grin. His grin was so wide that it made me think of a jack-o’-lantern. “I’m joking, Quinn. I like you too much to ever shoot you. But I wish you weren’t so clueless.”

Dismayed, I said, “‘Clueless’ is kind of harsh.”

“Not really. I like you too much to sugarcoat it. Get your shit together, amigo. But keep your sense of humor or you’ll go insane, like so many seem to have done these days.”

Opening the door, I said, “I will. I’ll get my shit together.”

“Another thing. You have a smartphone?”

I withdrew it from a jacket pocket. “Apple. You want me to stay in touch?”

“Not really. I want you to stomp hard on that phone and drop it in the nearest storm drain. It’s got GPS. They can track you as long as you carry it.”

“But I’ve got all these apps. I’ve got weather and maps and podcasts.”

“You want to survive, you’ve got to be totally street from here on, Quinn.” He held out his cell phone. “It’s a burner, disposable. Nothing fancy. I didn’t use my name when I activated it.”

“I can’t take your phone,” I said.

He threw it at me, and I caught it. “And one more thing, amigo. You know about three-hundred-sixty-degree license-plate scanners?”

“Should I get one?”

He snorted in a prayerful sort of way and rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, protect this boy. Quinn, every police car and a lot of other government vehicles are equipped with scanners that record license plates all around them and transmit in real time to the National Security Agency’s million-square-foot data center in Utah. You’ll be scanned half a dozen times before you’re out of this city. If they want you as bad as you say they want you, they’ll be alerted every time you’re scanned, and they’ll track you down sooner than later.”