Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (44 page)

He handed me one of my hard drives and told
me she was going to come out and bring me the other drive. When she
finally came out, she was still crying. She opened the passenger
side door, but wouldn't get in yet. "Do you promise not to have me
arrested?" she asked me.

"Yes, I promise. And you know I always keep
my word."

She got in the car and told me she had sold
my hard drive to Lorne, the 70-year-old who only had one arm. On
our way to his house, she explained that there had been some sort
of drug dispute between one of the dope boys staying at the trap
house where she was staying, and some other dope boy. The other guy
showed up with a gun and threatened to shoot everyone. Then the
dope boy who stayed at the trap house called his buddies for back
up, and those were the guys I had seen prowling around the house.
They were standing guard in case the other guy came back.

Once we arrived at Lorne's house, Haley
asked me for $30 so she could buy my drive back from him.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Get my fucking
drive back! Tell him I will have him arrested for dealing in stolen
property if he won't give my stuff back," I yelled.

She got out of the car, walked up to the
door, talked to Lorne for three or four minutes, and then returned
with my drive.

"I am so sorry," she cried. "I can't believe
I stole from you."

"I can't believe it either," I said with a
sad tone in my voice.

"It's those fucking drugs. When I take Xanax
and drink, I black out. I do all sorts of crazy shit, and then I
don't remember anything afterwards," she said.

I didn't really know what to say, so I just
gave her a hug. Veronica was about to be released from jail and go
into the Salvation Army rehab program. I wasn't going to hang out
with Haley anymore anyway, because I had promised Veronica I'd be
faithful to her, and I had kept my word so far. So I figured this
would be the last time I'd see Haley. I was wrong.

A few weeks later, Haley called me and told
me that she had a really bad infection in her cheek. She had been
picking her face while smoking crack, and one of the scabs got
really infected. As it turned out later, it was MRSA. She needed me
to take her to the emergency room. Of course I did.

"Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has
to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to
jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are
nonviolent drug users."

Ralph Nader

When Veronica was finally released from jail
in September 2012, she had gained about 50 pounds. She was still
pretty, but she had chubby chipmunk cheeks now. She didn't look
like a tall, blonde Lothlórien Elf from Lord of The Rings anymore.
They brought her to the Salvation Army on Edison Avenue. It's not
only a homeless shelter but also a rehab center.

Inmates/patients are not allowed to have
cell phones in rehab, but Veronica asked me to bring her one
anyway. I had a bad feeling, but she told me she wanted it so she
could text me from her room at night. She said it would help her
pass the time until she could finally come home to me.

Veronica also wanted to color her hair, from
blonde back to her original dark brown, because in jail her roots
had grown out so much, her hair was a mess. They're not allowed to
have hair dye in rehab, but after being there just two days,
Veronica told me she had met a guy who would get her some from
Walmart. Right there I knew something was going on. Why else would
this guy risk going back to prison for violating the rehab rules,
to bring her illegal contraband?

His name was Dee. He had been in prison for
selling drugs. He was a short black kid who tried to look like Lil
Wayne. He had long dreads and lots of tattoos. He only had about
one more month to go, before completing the 6 month program.

During the first 2 months, patients are not
allowed to leave the rehab center. In the next 4 months, they are
allowed to leave and look for work. Once they have reached certain
milestones, they get day passes on Sundays and are allowed to spend
a few hours at home with family.

The fact that Dee was willing to risk going
back to prison by smuggling contraband into the rehab center, so
close to completing the program, made me suspicious. Right after I
gave Veronica the cell phone, I hacked it, to see what she would do
with it. My instincts were right again.

As soon as she turned the phone on, she
started texting Dee, not me. She told him she would send him naked
pictures of herself and asked him for a picture of his dick. And
she asked him to bring her chicken wings from KFC.

Then she started texting me and told me how
much she supposedly loved me. I didn't really know how to respond
to that. Should I tell her already that I could see everything she
was doing on her cell phone? Or should I wait and gather some more
intel first? If I waited, she would send that thuggish nigger naked
pictures of herself and then she'd probably fuck him in some dark
corner. I couldn't handle that. Then she called him. I could hear
everything she was saying. She called him babe, and the way they
were talking to each other left no doubt that there was something
going on between them.

When she texted me again a few minutes
later, and asked me why I was acting weird, I told her I had hacked
the phone and saw that she was about to send naked pictures to some
lowlife thug. I told her I was done with her and that I wanted
nothing to do with her anymore.

She was shocked that I knew what she was
doing. Then she put one of her 3 roommates on the phone, and had
that girl lie to me, pretending that this other girl had borrowed
Veronica's phone and that she was the one who had been texting and
calling Dee, not Veronica.

I told the other girl that I knew she was
lying. The fact that Veronica was not only cheating on me, but that
her so-called friends knew all about it and they were all
conspiring against me by helping her deceive me, pissed me off even
more.

When Veronica got back on the phone I told
her she was a lowlife piece of shit and a worthless whore. I told
her never to call me again. She was really upset and asked me to
please come to viso the next day, so we could talk. I didn't really
see what there was to talk about, but the next day, on Sunday, I
went to visit her at 2 pm anyway.

In jail I had only been able to see her on a
video screen during visos, but at the Salvation Army, patients and
their visitors were allowed to meet in the same room, in a small
chapel. Chairs were arranged in about 15 different little groups of
2 or 3 chairs each, that faced each other.

I quietly sat across from Veronica with my
arms crossed and an angry look on my face. She was so upset, she
was trembling. At first she tried to make light of it: "I didn't do
anything! I didn't cheat on you! I was just texting him!"

"No, you weren't just texting him. You were
flirting with him, and you were about to send him naked pictures,
if I hadn't stopped you and told you I knew what you were doing," I
calmly replied in a hostile tone.

"I really don't care about Dee. I don't even
like guys. You're the only guy I want to be with," she said with
tears in her eyes.

"Then why the fuck would you send him naked
pictures?"

"I was just gonna send him those pictures so
he would bring me chicken wings," she said. As if that was a
legitimate excuse. As if the fact that she was whoring herself out
for chicken wings made it all ok somehow. How fucking damaged in
the head was this girl?!?

"We both know what comes next. First you
send him naked pictures for chicken wings, then you suck his dick
for cigarettes or fuck him for drugs," I said angrily. I was so
disgusted with her.

"I'm so so sorry," she said, still trembling
with anxiety.

"You're not sorry for cheating on me. You're
just sorry you got caught," I replied. I had seen on her phone that
she had not only cheated on me with Dee, but also logged into her
old Gmail account, and downloaded all her drug contacts into the
new Android phone I had given her. She was texting all those guys
too, telling them she couldn't wait to hook up with them. She was
drug networking, while she was in rehab. Obviously that's exactly
the reason why addicts aren't supposed to have phones when they're
in rehab. I felt like an idiot for letting her talk me into giving
her a phone.

"I love you! Please give me another chance.
I want to prove to you that I can be a good girlfriend. I'm never
going to cheat on you or hurt you again, I swear!" she said. Her
face was pale and sweaty. She was so anxious, she looked like she
was going to throw up. She wasn't faking that. She really was
genuinely upset.

She had fucked so many different guys and
girls while she was living on the streets, walking along 41 as a
crackwhore and bouncing from one cheap motel to the next, did one
more guy really make any difference at this point? Not really.

Yeah, I was really really hurt and upset.
But I wasn't naive. I knew she was a crackwhore, and I knew that
that life was all she knew for the past few years, ever since she
was a teenager. I knew it wouldn't be easy for her to change. I had
anticipated that she would cheat on me. I was by no means ok with
it, but was I really willing to throw her away just because she was
damaged?

"Ok, I'll give you one more chance," I said.
"But if I find out you're still talking to Dee, or texting him, or
even just looking at him in the hallway, I'm done. And don't even
think about texting any of those other dope boys again."

She told me again that she loved me and how
sorry she was, and that this was never going to happen again. She
promised she was going to have nothing whatsoever to do with Dee or
any other guy from now on.

She calmed down a little bit, but she was
still very anxious. Then she told me that when she's really
nervous, she gets diarrhea. So that's why she had been sweating and
looked so pale. She was trying not to shit her pants. We hugged and
kissed, and then she ran to the bathroom.

As soon as I left, I hacked her phone again.
I was going to check for myself if she was really being good now. I
wasn't just going to take her word for it.

Not even half an hour after the end of our
viso, Veronica asked Nancy, one of her roommates, to call one of
Dee's roommates and relay a message to him. The guy Nancy was
talking to wasn't sure who the message was for at first, so Nancy
said: "It's for Dee. You know, Veronica's dude. Tell him Veronica
wants to meet him in the cafeteria."

Veronica's dude? So everyone in rehab knew
they were dating. What the FUCK?!?

I didn't know what was more baffling, her
audacity, or her stupidity. Veronica thought by having her roommate
talk to Dee's roommate, somehow I wouldn't catch on to the fact
that she was still talking to Dee, still flirting with him, still
hanging out with him, still dating him, and probably still fucking
him. I guess she thought I could only read her texts, but not hear
actual conversations.

I texted her that I knew she was still
dating Dee and that they were about to meet in the cafeteria, and I
told her once again what a lying lowlife piece of shit she was, and
that it was over. I really wanted nothing to do with her
anymore.

I had complete control over her phone, so I
was able to turn on the microphone even while her phone was not in
use. While I was texting her, I could hear everything that was
going on in her room. Her roommate Nancy had the phone in her hands
and was texting some other inmate. They were dating and having sex.
They were texting about where they were going to meet up next to
fuck without getting caught by the rehab staff.

As my texts arrived, Nancy was reading them
out loud to Veronica, and they were both laughing at me. They
thought they were cool as shit. I hated them both so much at that
moment, hearing how arrogant and obnoxious and condescending they
were.

When Veronica was around other inmates, she
liked to pretend that she was a hustler and a bigshot drug dealer,
and that she made enough money selling drugs so she didn't have to
trick. She liked to talk down to other girls. She called them nasty
hoes, and she pretended that she was above tricking.

The truth however was that she was much
worse off than most other girls who tricked. She was homeless when
I met her, and she literally had nothing except the clothes on her
back. Veronica had walked 41, selling her body to anyone who passed
by. She was on the lowest rung of the ladder. Being a streetwalker
on 41 or Palm Beach is the lowest form of prostitution in Fort
Myers. There is nothing lower than that. It's the final destination
on the downward spiral of drug addiction.

Veronica didn't want the other hookers to
know that she was even lower than most of them, and that she had
sucked dick for as little as $20 and that she had let thugs fuck
her for a single hit of crack. So she liked to put on a grandiose
act of what a successful hustler she supposedly was.

When Nancy read my text messages out loud to
Veronica, she commented: "That Oliver dude is getting to be a
headache. You should ditch his ass."