The Mark

by Kiki Swinson

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. All of the run-down hotels in this city have the same cards. They keep them until they don’t work anymore.”

  Telling me that all the run-down hotels had the same key cards didn’t help me at all. I was in total distress. This wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

  My fists were curled tightly and my toes were bunched up in my shoes as the taxi rounded the corner of the block where my apartment building stood. The closer I got to it the harder my heart drummed against my chest bones. I took a deep breath, but meditation and even a tranquilizer would probably not have calmed me down at that moment. There was definitely a raging wildfire going on in my brain. I couldn’t describe the different thoughts and feelings coursing through my mind at that moment. I guess the words that were ringing loud and clear for me were betrayal and hurt. Matt had surely done it now. Everything that he and I ever had had gone out the window. There were no good memories for him and me. Everything had been erased from my mind. And all I could think about was what he’d done to my family. He took the very thing that mattered to me because of some fucking money. I promised I would see to it that he got back everything he deserved, even if it meant a slow and painful death. I was gonna make that nigga wish he never met me. And that was my word!

  4

  BACK AT SQUARE ONE

  With that guy’s jacket in hand, I stomped down the carpeted hallway; that much I did know, but I was definitely on cruise control. My legs were pretty much carrying me along because my brain certainly wasn’t thinking straight. I guess it was a good thing that my muscle memory knew the direction to my apartment like the back of my hand because as angry as I was, I might’ve walked right into a damn wall had I not known automatically where to go.

  A few of my neighbors gave me some hard stares but none of them dared to question me. They knew I wasn’t a very friendly person, even before I lost my family. So after I entered my apartment, I collapsed on my living room sofa. I turned on the TV even though I knew I wasn’t going to watch it. I believed I did it so I could hear someone’s voice in my apartment other than my own. Thinking about Derek and my baby boy gave me the feeling of not wanting to live anymore. How was I going to go on with my life without Derek and our son? This wasn’t how my life was supposed to be. My life was filled with happiness! I was in love and it felt like I finally found someone who loved me back. Now they were both gone. I’ve heard people say that death was untimely. I guessed I never thought I’d witness it myself. Who would’ve thought that I was going to wake up that morning with my baby and my man and lose them both? Never in a fucking million years!

  I sat there on the sofa with the key card in hand and hoped that God would give me a sign. Then it hit me. I grabbed the food receipts from the pizza spot and Chinese restaurant and noticed that they were only a block away from each other. And the times on the receipts were hours apart, so that led me to believe that the hotel they were staying at couldn’t be that far away. I grabbed my cell phone from my handbag and googled hotels near the restaurants. A small list of five run-down hotels popped up. I screenshot all of them and called them one by one. I made the first call to Parkside Hotel on Seventy-Ninth Street. A man answered on the first ring. “Thanks for calling Parkside Hotel, how may I be of service to you?” he said.

  “Hi, sir, I’m looking for a guest by the name of Matt Connors. Can you tell me if he checked out yet?” I asked him. I wanted him to believe that I knew Matt was there. This way I’d have a better chance at getting whatever information I needed just in case Matt was actually there.

  “Ma’am, I’m looking in our system and I don’t see him registered as one of our guests,” the man stated.

  “Are you sure? I mean, maybe the room is registered under his brother’s name. They’re both from Virginia.”

  “Does his brother have the same last name?”

  “No, he doesn’t. But he’d be registered under a Virginia driver’s license,” I replied. I knew he heard the desperation in my voice because I heard it myself.

  “Ma’am, if you don’t have a name then I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Well, would you just tell me if there’s someone there registered under a Virginia driver’s license?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I won’t be able to do that.”

  “Sir, please, this is a very urgent matter,” I begged him.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry but what you’re asking me to do is against hotel policy.”

  “Sir, this a life-or-death situation.”

  “Ma’am, if it’s really a life-or-death situation then you need to contact the police,” he told me.

  Instead of pressing him anymore, I disconnected our call. I was livid that I wasn’t able to get the information I needed so I called the next hotel on my list. It was called The Lucerne. It was also located on Seventy-Ninth Street. I crossed my fingers and prayed to God that Matt was at this hotel. “Thanks for calling The Lucerne. Our operator will be with you shortly,” the recording said.

  I waited for a couple of seconds and then I got a live person on the phone. “Thanks for calling The Lucerne, how may I direct your call?” the operator asked me.

  “I’m looking for a guest by the name of Matt Connors. Will you please connect me to his room?” I asked the operator.

  “Do you have a room number?” she asked me.

  “No. He called me and left me a message that he’d be at this hotel and for me to call him back,” I lied to her.

  “I’m afraid I don’t see him as a guest at our hotel.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, he just left the voice mail for me to call him back at this hotel,” I continued to lie.

  “Would there be another guest accompanying him?” the operator wanted to know. She was being very thorough with her search.

  “You know what? I didn’t think about that. He’s probably with his friend Kevin,” I added, coming up with the first name I could think of.

  “What’s Kevin’s last name?” she asked me.

  Once again, I gave her the first name I could come up with. “Ummm, I think it’s Brown,” I told her, knowing damn well I didn’t know a Kevin Brown. Nor did Matt know a guy by the name of Kevin Brown. I knew I only had a small window of opportunity to build a rapport with the woman in hopes that she’d help me locate Matt by any means necessary. I also knew that I needed to sound like she was being very helpful and that I appreciated her time.

  I heard her clicking on the keys of her computer keyboard and then the clicking sound stopped. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t see where we have a Kevin Brown as one of our guests.”

  I let out a long sigh. “This is strange because I just got a message from him saying that he was at this hotel.”

  “Why don’t you call him back?” she suggested.

  “Could you tell me if you’ve had a guest check in with a Virginia driver’s license?” I asked while I crossed my fingers.

  “I’m afraid I can’t say, ma’am. But I’m sure if you call this gentleman back, he’ll tell you which room he’s registered under.”

  I sucked my teeth. I was fucking disgusted that I struck out for the second time. I abruptly hung up. “Fucking bitch!” I spat. I was losing patience and time was running out. I needed to find Matt before he and his crew left the city.

  Back to the drawing board, I called the third hotel on the list. It was called Hotel Belleclaire. It was on Seventy-Seventh Street and it was only about two blocks from Riverside Park. A female operator answered. “Thank you for calling Hotel Belleclaire. How may I direct your call?”

  I took a deep breath and crossed my fingers. “Would you connect me to Mr. Matt Connors’s room?” I asked.

  “Do you know what room he’s in?” she wanted to know.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t. He just left me a message telling me he was at this hotel and for me to call him back. We’re both from Virginia. He came up here yesterday for a business meeting. My plane just landed here at LaGuardia a few minutes ago so I�
��m very excited and can’t wait to see him,” I lied, hoping this would help me find out if Matt was there.

  “I don’t see a Matt Connors registered here. Are you sure he told you that he was at the Hotel Belleclaire?” the lady wondered aloud.

  “Yes, ma’am, he did. And now that I think about it, maybe the company he works for has the room registered under their name. The company is out of Virginia. You may also see a few more people from Virginia registered there too. They would be his friends and colleagues. The company my husband works for had a big convention last night. Their formal dinner for the husbands and wives is tonight,” I continued to lie. I knew I had to spread this lie on real thick. Plus, I knew I had to keep talking. This would throw her off her game and keep her from realizing that I was trying to get information out of her.

  “What’s the name of the company your husband works for?” the woman asked.

  “East Coast Inc.,” I replied. This lying game I was playing was becoming easier by the minute.

  I heard a few more clicks. Then she said, “I don’t see the name of that company listed in our database, but I do see a Walter Gene from Norfolk, Virginia, registered as a guest.”

  “Oh, that’s his friend of ten years,” I blurted out.

  “Would you like for me to connect you to that room?” she asked.

  “Sure. But what’s the room number so I can have it when I get there.”

  “I’m not at liberty to give you the room number but I can transfer you to the room.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” I lied once again. As happy as I was at the beginning of our conversation, now all of that was gone. I felt defeated all over again. I needed a fucking hotel room number. Fuck transferring me to the room. What the hell was I going to say after someone answered the phone? Hello, this is Lauren and I’m looking for Matt because he just killed my fucking husband and my baby. Can you please put him on the phone? Yeah, that would be the dumbest shit I could ever do. I guessed I had to take what she gave me and go from there.

  “Will you hold on while I connect you?” she asked me, and then I heard a couple of clicks. Seconds later, the line started ringing. Immediately, my mind raced like crazy. I went from being upset that I couldn’t get the room number to becoming mentally frazzled. But I knew this was my only chance to find out where Matt was so I gave myself a quick pep talk. Shake it off, Lauren. You gotta act level-headed. This might be your only chance to find your family. Be smart about it.

  My heart started beating erratically. I couldn’t believe that I found out which hotel Matt was staying at. Was this a miracle or what? I thought about what I was going to say when I heard his voice. Was I going to threaten him? Was I going to give him a chance to make things right? Either way, I knew this call wasn’t going to be pleasant for me, knowing that my family was dead. And knowing this, I allowed the phone to ring once and then I hung it up. I knew I’d botch my plan of catching Matt if I got him on the phone and asked him where he was. I sat there with the phone in my hands and racked my brain trying to figure out how I was going to execute my plan. Then it hit me. I remembered that Derek and I had a family locator app on our phones. Excited that I could use my GPS and the app to locate him, I turned the feature on and pressed the send button. I waited for the GPS to pinpoint Derek’s whereabouts. As soon as the locator beeped, I zoomed in on the location.

  Derek’s phone was definitely at the Hotel Belleclaire so I was on the right track. Now why hadn’t I thought about this before? Fuck! I’d wasted so much time. I could’ve probably saved my family if I would’ve thought about using my fucking GPS cell phone locator. “Ugh!” I screeched through clenched teeth. But then I realized that I couldn’t beat myself up. I had to get focused. I had to get out of there right then. Knowing this gave me the burst of energy I needed to drag myself off my sofa and out my front door. It only took me several minutes to get back down to the first floor. I grabbed the first cab I saw and instructed the man behind the wheel to take me to Hotel Belleclaire across town.

  My adrenaline was pumping while my heart started racing with no plans of stopping. The blood pumping through my veins started boiling at the mere thought of Matt taking their lives. “Can you go a little faster?” I barked at the driver. It just seemed like we were going in slow motion.

  “Lady, you want me to speed and get a ticket?” he barked back.

  “Look, just get me to the damn hotel!” I spat. My heart was heavy and my mind was going into overload. I didn’t know how things were going to go down but I knew I’d figure it out once I was finally at the hotel.

  I kept looking down at the GPS tracker on my phone. For the entire drive to this hotel the dot remained still. I couldn’t tell if the GPS tracker on my phone was functioning properly, and that scared me. The fear of not knowing began to cripple my mind. Thankfully, I didn’t let that deter me from moving forward to find Matt and my family.

  As soon as the taxi driver pulled up to the front of the hotel, I wasted no time paying him his fare. “Keep the change,” I told him after I tossed thirty dollars at him.

  I tried to walk into the hotel lobby as fast as I could without hurting myself. There was no doorman there to let me in so I stepped up to the glass doors. Inside, the lobby was empty. I looked for the desk clerk and there was no one insight. I walked up to the counter and hit the bell placed on top of it. Seconds later, a gentleman who looked like he was from India came forth. “How can I help you?” he asked me in his foreign accent.

  “I’m looking for my cousin. I don’t know what room he’s in but he told me he was at this hotel. So I was wondering if you could call his room and tell him that I am here,” I lied.

  “What is your cousin’s name?”

  “Matt Connors,” I told him, and then I watched him type Matt’s name into his computer.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any guests by that name registered here at this hotel.”

  “Well, that can’t be right because I just called an hour ago and was transferred to his room,” I lied once more.

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right hotel?”

  “Of course.”

  “Maybe he’s registered under a different name.”

  “I’ll tell you what, look in your system for an African-American male who checked into this hotel between yesterday and today with a Virginia ID.”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t do that. That’s against hotel policy.”

  “Don’t you own the place?”

  “No, I am not the owner. And if I were I couldn’t do it.”

  Becoming frustrated by this man’s lack of cooperation, I leaned over on the counter as tears filled up my eyes. I knew Matt had to be here. He had Derek’s phone. And according to my GPS, Derek’s cell phone was somewhere in one of these hotel rooms. “Listen, sir, I am in a severe amount of pain. I just got out of the hospital from having a baby two days ago. So all I’m asking you to do is find out where my family is so I can get off my feet and lie down. Now can you do that for me please? I beg you.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t do that. I told you that’s against hotel policy,” he said, and stood there as if he wasn’t going to budge.

  It took everything within me not to take my gun out of my purse and shoot this man right in his head. I figured I really had nothing to lose. But then it dawned on me that I was going to find out where Matt was one way or another.

  I changed my tune and told the hotel clerk that I appreciated his time. This allowed me to put him in a mind frame of letting his guard down. And guess what? It worked. As soon as he turned to walk back to the room from which he came, I pulled my gun out of my purse as I rushed toward him. Before he could fully turn around, I had the gun pointed in his back. “Turn your motherfucking ass around and walk back to that fucking computer,” I snapped.

  “Please don’t hurt me! I will do anything you want,” he whined like a little bitch.

  “Shut the fuck up! I ain’t gonna hurt you. I just wanna find my fucking f
amily like I told you the first time,” I barked as I pushed him toward the counter.

  He started hitting the computer keys without me asking. When I looked at the monitor, I noticed that he was signing back into the system with his ID number.

  “Who am I looking for?” he uttered, barely audible.

  “Just find anyone in the system who registered under a Virginia driver’s license,” I instructed him.

  There was a long list of people who had checked in the hotel between yesterday and today. He went from floor to floor as he searched his database. I stood behind him and peered over his shoulder as we both read all the names on the list. Then my heart stopped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There in black-and-white was Derek’s full name. “Oh my God! He used Derek’s name to get the fucking room.” I panicked. My heart began to race at an uncontrollable speed. Now why the fuck hadn’t I thought of that? I felt an influx of sweat pouring from the pores of my hands. I searched the screen for the room number. And there it was listed at the bottom. Room 318. “Get a key card for Room Three-Eighteen now,” I instructed him while I buried the gun deeper into his back.

  The hotel clerk scrambled to make a key card for Room 318. “Hurry up before somebody comes in here!” I ordered him while I kept my eyes on him plus the front entrance.

  “I’m doing it as fast as I can,” he replied.

  “Well, do it faster.” I ground my teeth. I found myself looking toward the entryway the guests used to get back and forth to their rooms. I could never be too careful. Matt and his boys could’ve easily come down while I was holding the hotel clerk at gunpoint.

  After I nudged him in the back a couple of times, he made a copy of the key card and handed it to me. I snatched it from his hands and grabbed him by his right arm. “Come on, let’s go,” I said. I was ready to go and face these niggas head-on.

  “No! No! I must stay down here just in case someone comes walking through the front door,” he protested. He didn’t want to budge.