Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (43 page)

But like Hussy, Haley knew that I would
never say no if she had an emergency and needed my help. So when
Haley realized that I was ignoring her calls on purpose, she
started to fabricate all sorts of emergencies to get me to talk to
her and spend time with her.

One time she told me that she had an offer
for a regular job, that would allow her to stop tricking on Palm
Beach. She told me she needed to go to the DMV and get a copy of
her driver's license, before they gave the job to someone else, and
only I could drive her to get her papers.

Every time I saw Haley, I tried to convince
her to go to rehab. I told her all she had to do was say the word,
and I would drop everything and drive her to rehab right away. So
one day she told me she finally decided to go to rehab, and she
needed me to take her there before she changed her mind. I drove
all the way to Palm Beach to get her and drive her to detox in Port
Charlotte. But after I picked her up, she said she wanted to make a
quick stop and say good bye to an old friend first. She disappeared
in his house for a few minutes and then told me to take her back to
where I had picked her up. She really wasn't going to Port
Charlotte. She had just conned me into taking her on a quick drug
run. She did that a lot. She always came up with new stories why
she needed me to come get her. It was an emergency! And then it
always ended up being just another drug run.

Then one night she called me with yet
another so-called emergency. Her baby daddy Rodney had just gotten
out of jail again recently, and they were staying together at a
dirty little trap house off of Palm Beach Boulevard. Now he was
supposedly trying to kill her, because he thought she had stolen
his last bag of heroin.

It was late, and I was already in bed. I had
taken some melatonin, a natural supplement that's supposed to help
you fall asleep. I really wasn't in the mood to get up and drive
all the way to Palm Beach for one of her fake emergencies again.
She had cried wolf one too many times.

But I could tell by the panic in her voice
that she wasn't kidding this time. She really was scared for her
life: "Please come get me! PLEASE!!! He's going to kill me!"

I got up, got dressed and drove to Palm
Beach to get her. I had no choice. Even though she had fooled me a
bunch of times with fake emergencies, what if this one was real?
And it really did sound like the real deal this time. What if I
didn't go get her and then the next day I'd read in the paper that
her dead body was found in a ditch somewhere? I wouldn't be able to
live with myself.

When I pulled up in front of the run down
house where they were staying, I called Haley. She didn't answer
the phone, but she came running out from behind the house. Rodney
was right behind her, chasing her with a baseball bat, taking
swings, but narrowly missing her. Holy shit! I'm as anti-gun as
they come. But in moments like these, I really wished I had a
gun.

Haley was quicker than Rodney. Taking swings
slowed him down. She easily jumped the broken chainlink fence in
front of the house and got in my car. "GO!" she yelled, while he
was clumsily trying to jump over the fence as well. The baseball
bat in one hand made it difficult. We took off down the road.

Haley was hysterically crying, trying to
explain what had happened, but I couldn't understand a word,
because she was sobbing so hard. And it didn't really matter
anyway. It was just another normal day in the life of Haley the
crackwhore. Although it was a different story every time, all the
stories were the same somehow. This wasn't the first time she
sobbed so hard that I couldn't understand her, and it wouldn't be
the last. Rodney tried to call her a few times, before her phone
died. She slowly calmed down. "Thanks for coming to get me, Oliver.
You just saved my life."

I gave her a hug with my right arm while
holding the steering wheel with my left, and said: "You need to get
clean, sweetie. If you keep doing drugs and hanging out with these
lowlives, you really will end up dead one day."

By the time we got back to my place, it was
2 am, and I was dead tired. The melatonin really worked. "I'm going
to bed," I said.

"I'm way too hyper right now. I can't sleep.
Is it ok if I sit in the living room for a while and play around on
the computer?" Haley asked.

"Sure. Just don't wake me up at 4 am and ask
me to drive you back to Palm Beach," I said.

Haley laughed and promised she wouldn't.

At 4 am, she came into the bedroom and woke
me up anyway. I fucking knew it. "I'm sorry, but Rodney keeps
calling me, and he knows where you live. He said if I don't come
back he'll come here and start problems," she said.

"Bullshit," I mumbled half asleep. "Your
phone is dead, and we both know Rodney doesn't know where I live,
and he has no way of getting to Bonita Springs anyway."

"No, really, he keeps texting me," Haley
insisted.

"No he's not. Show me his texts," I
demanded.

Of course she couldn't. Her phone really was
dead, Rodney really didn't call or text her, and she just wanted me
to take her back to Palm Beach so she could get more crack.

I was so pissed at her, but I knew that I
wasn't gonna get any more sleep until I drive her back. I dropped
her off at the same house where Rodney tried to kill her with a
baseball bat, and by the time I got home, the sun came up. I went
back to sleep.

I woke up around noon and tried to get some
work done on my computer. That's when I noticed my two external
hard drives were missing. Haley had stolen them while I was
sleeping. Motherfucker! I went out of my way for her in the middle
of the night and literally saved her life, and she thanked me by
robbing me in my sleep. Nice.

I was so pissed at her, I needed revenge. I
was thinking about pretending not to have noticed that she robbed
me and then, when she calls me the next time, I'd pick her up and
beat the shit out of her. Oh, who was I kidding? I had never hit a
girl, and I wasn't going to start now, no matter how pissed I was
at her.

While I was plotting my revenge, she called
me: "Hey sweetie, wanna come get me again?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I blurted out.
"You stole my fucking hard drives!"

"What are you talking about? No, I didn't,"
she claimed. "We have known each other for so long now. You know I
would never steal from you! I would never jeopardize our
relationship like that. You mean too much to me."

"Spare me the bullshit and give me back my
hard drives, or I'll call the cops," I demanded.

"Fuck you! Now you're gonna threaten me with
the cops? FUCK YOU! I don't have your stupid hard drives," she
yelled. She acted like she was highly offended.

"I'm warning you. I never make empty
threats," I said. "I'm telling you, I really will call the cops if
you don't give me my drives back."

She kept denying it, so I hung up on her and
called the cops.

A deputy arrived a few minutes later. Haley
was blowing up my phone, calling over and over, trying to convince
me that she really didn't have my drives, and that I shouldn't call
the cops. She even tried to threaten me. She said she knew a lot of
bad people who could make my life very difficult. She should have
known better, because that only pissed me off more.

I answered the phone right in front of the
police officer and told Haley one last time to give my drives back,
and told her that if she continued to deny it, I would just hang up
and file a report with the officer who was standing right in front
of me. She denied it again, so I hung up on her.

The next time the phone rang, I picked up
again, and a voice said: "Please come get me! Ron hit me again.
This time I broke up with him for good."

Wait. What?

"Huh? Who is this? And who is Ron?" I
asked.

"It's me, Jennifer," the voice said. "Can
you come and get me?"

Remember Jennifer the gold digger who looked
better than Jenna Jameson? I used to see her for a while, while I
was living in that big house in Pennsylvania. She and I had talked
about moving in together a few times, and she had asked me to come
rescue her a couple of times, when she and her alcoholic boyfriend
Ron had yet another violent fight.

But after I met Alice and stopped seeing
Jennifer, we didn't talk for a few weeks, and then I saw on
Jennifer's Facebook page that she and Ron moved to Dallas. I didn't
hear from her in well over a year, and suddenly, out of nowhere,
she called me to come and get her in Texas. While I was in the
middle of filing a police report, because Haley had stolen my hard
drives. You can't make this shit up. Well, you could, but why would
you want to?

I told Jennifer that I was sorry I couldn't
help her right now, and that I was dealing with my own crisis at
the moment. Then I sat down with the officer and filled out the
paperwork for the report. He asked me how much the drives were
worth.

"Well, they're used," I said, "so they're
probably not worth more than $50 each. But to me they are
irreplaceable because all my photos are on those drives. I can't
replace those. And all my work is saved on them."

"Sorry, but if the value of the stolen
property is less than $300, we don't do anything," the deputy
explained.

"What? So you're not gonna do anything?" I
asked in disbelief.

"Nope. I'm going to take your report, but as
soon as I walk out of your door, I'm going to close your case," he
said.

Unfuckingbelievable. I was about to lie and
pretend that Haley had stolen some cash, too, so that the total
value would be over $300. But then the phone rang again. It was
Haley.

"Look, I swear I didn't take your drives.
But to save our relationship, I'll do whatever I can to help you
find them, ok?" she said.

Remember that little joke, about the
alcoholic and the drug addict? The addict will steal from you and
then help you look for it.

"Whatever," I said. "As long as I get my
drives back, I really don't care who took them."

"I swear I didn't take them. I think maybe
Rodney stole them. I know a lot of people, so I'll ask around for
you, ok? Please don't file a report, I promise you'll get your
drives back tonight," she said.

"Ok, if I get my drives back tonight, I'll
drop the charges," I promised.

"She agreed to give me my stuff back," I
told the officer. "I'm going to meet up with her on Palm
Beach."

"Oh no you're not," the officer said
sternly. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"Well, if you guys aren't gonna do anything,
I really don't have a choice. I need my drives back," I said.

"That's really foolish," the officer
said.

I gave him her full name and the address
where I was going to meet her. I told him that if I turned up dead,
it was her fault.

On my way to the shitty little trap house
off of Palm Beach, Haley called me. She was hysterically crying
again: "OH MY GOD! HE HAS A GUN! HE'S GOING TO KILL US!!"

"What? Who? Who has a gun?" I asked. I
thought maybe she was talking about Rodney. Or some other dope boy
at that house. Maybe he got pissed when he heard that because of
Haley I had alerted the police and now he was afraid he was going
to get arrested, too.

"Do you want me to call the cops?" I
asked.

"No, they're already outside," she cried. I
could barely understand her, because she was sobbing so hard again.
But from the little that I did understand, I think she said
something about some kind of a stand off between some guy with a
gun and the cops. She was hiding in the closet, waiting for me to
come get her.

"There better not be some guy with a gun
waiting for me when I get there," I said. "Or I won't even stop.
I'll drive right by and call the cops and they'll put you in
jail."

When I finally got to the house, I realized
just how stupid I really was. What the hell was I thinking, driving
into the hood, to a house where some angry guy with a gun was
waiting for me because I had called the cops? Did I have some kind
of death wish? Apparently yes.

I stopped about 40 feet away from the house,
while leaving the engine running. I figured that distance would
give me enough reaction time to speed away if I saw anyone other
than Haley come out of the house and approach my car. Man I wished
I had a gun right now.

I saw two or three shady characters prowl
around the house, but none of them was paying any attention to me.
Then someone else emerged from the house and approached my car. It
was Rodney. My heart was pounding. He had something in his hand. A
gun?

I could tell by his body language that he
was not aggressive. He was scared. When he reached the car, I
rolled down my window. He was clearly more afraid of me than I was
of him.

"Haley said you called the cops," he
said.

"Yeah, I did. She stole from me."

"Please don't have us arrested," he
begged.

"I gave her my word that I won't, as long as
she gives my drives back," I said confidently. I felt like Dirty
Harry there for a minute. I got the hood running scared!