BB let out a low whistle. “Man. It’s another world down there, isn’t it? The South.”
Anton didn’t want to get into a goddamn political conversation right now. “BB,” he said desperately. “I’m telling you my location just in case. But mostly, I need to know whose name the car is registered under. In case he asks.”
“The car? Hell, I don’t know. My secretary arranged it. Probably a company car. We do business in Atlanta, right? It’s probably under Branson Industries.”
Anton looked in the rearview mirror and saw the trooper exiting his vehicle. “He’s headed back this way, BB. I should hang up. Can you make a few calls to find out and get right back to me?”
“Sure. I’ll be in touch.”
Anton hung up without saying goodbye, looking out of his side mirror as the trooper’s bulky frame filled it. He rolled down the window again and was relieved when the man handed his license back to him. “You didn’t tell me you were attorney general, sir.” The voice was still gruff, distant, but it was obvious that an olive branch was being extended. Anton had not misheard the note of deference.
“You didn’t ask my occupation,” Anton said lightly, draining the slightest hint of hostility or indignation from his voice.
“You here on business, sir?”
Anton’s right hand gave an involuntary flutter, but he steadied it immediately. “You could say that,” he said in a noncommittal manner. The “sir” was encouraging and Anton took solace from it. Now the best strategy was to get out of here before too many questions were asked.
They both spoke at the same moment, and Anton stopped, indicating with his hand that the trooper—P. Flynn was the name on his badge—should go first. “Oh, sorry,” the man said. “I was just asking, so the car belongs to a friend?”
Anton swallowed hard, uneasy at this turn in the conversation. He stared out of his windshield for a second and then came to a decision. “Yes. But it may be registered to his company.” He forced himself to look Flynn directly in the face, straining his neck to look up. “I made a call to my friend,” he said, aware of the small muscle throbbing in his jaw. “While you were—checking my driver’s license in your cruiser. I gave him my location and asked him to call back in a few minutes with information about who the car is registered to.”
He noticed with satisfaction that Flynn took a step away from the car. “That won’t be necessary, sir,” he said. “I’ve—Everything checked out fine. We’re good.”
The relief Anton felt was so palpable that his upper eyelid twitched in celebration. “Am I free to go, then?” he said, the authority back in his voice.
“Absolutely.” Flynn gave a small, tight smile that nevertheless softened his face. “Have a good day, Mr. Coleman.”
Anton waited until the trooper was back in his car before clicking on his turn signal, waiting until the lane was completely absent of traffic before getting back on the highway. He drove the speed limit for the next eight miles, until he was very sure that Flynn was nowhere near him. It was only then that he became aware of his ice-cold hands and feet and the throbbing in his neck from where the muscles had stood at attention for the whole encounter. The fear that he had felt was wildly disproportionate to what had actually happened. He had not even had the presence of mind to ask Flynn how he’d found out who Anton was. But even as his mind told him that the whole thing had not been such a big deal, his body gave him a different answer. What he had felt was a primal fear, something coded into his DNA, the fear of a black man pulled over by a cop on a stretch of road in Georgia. A black man. That was exactly who he was in this godforsaken place. In New England he was scarcely aware of his skin as he went about his daily life. It wasn’t like he was ignorant of the fact that cops back home routinely racially profiled black kids. Or that black men around the country were still prey. Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The names were etched into his consciousness. But it had always been easy to put distance between himself and the Hoodie. The Cigarillos. The Overweight Guy choked like a dog on the streets of New York by a pack of cops. Those black men didn’t drive a Lexus. They did not have skin the color of copper, they did not make the cover of People magazine, they hadn’t been to Ivy League schools, they didn’t speak with a posh accent. And yet all this meant nothing to Trooper Flynn, who had eyed him with the same scorn that Anton had shown convicted felons and drug dealers. Trooper Flynn, who had just handed Anton one of the best lessons about his place in history that he’d ever learned.
He imagined telling David about this encounter, how the older man’s jaw would clench at the thought of some ignorant prick cop mistreating his son like this, how he would mentally comb through his Rolodex trying to think of whom he knew down there in Georgia who could haul this trooper’s sorry ass into the office and chew him out for disrespecting the governor’s son. And yet this same man, who would be more upset than Anton over the trivial, routine incident, could not see his way to apologize to a powerless black woman whom he had robbed. Yes, that was what David had done, he had robbed Juanita Vesper of her one singular possession, and given that she was serving a needlessly long prison sentence at the time, it may as well have been at gunpoint.