“You want me to take you across the border?”
“To Mexico? No, no, no. You have clothes to deliver.”
“So I’m a day late. Mr. Dai will understand. He’s a nice man.”
Gi Minh Dai had escaped Vietnam as a teenager in the seventies and, when he was just twenty, had founded what became a highly successful dry-cleaning service.
“I know good people in Mexico who’ll take you in.”
“That’s sweet of you, Juan. But I’d be eternally grateful if you’d just drop me off at the parking garage where I stowed my car.”
I gave him the address, and he said, “That crap Toyota of yours might not make it to Scottsdale.”
“I bought new tires and this terrific air freshener I hung from the rearview mirror.”
“I hate that pine smell. Always reminds me of urinal cakes.”
“It’s shaped like a pine tree,” I said, “but it smells like oranges.”
“Why wouldn’t they shape it like an orange?” His snort conveyed frustration with the outsourcing of American manufacturing, and he answered his own question. “Made in China—that’s why. Well, one good thing about your crap Toyota is it’s so old it doesn’t have GPS. They can’t track you by satellite.” He braked to a stop at an intersection and looked down at me as I huddled below window level. His expression was kind and, so it seemed to me, informed more by sympathy than pity. “What’s your plan, Quinn?”
“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.”