Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (53 page)

She was so lovable and affectionate. When we
spent time together, her face just lit up with this big beautiful
smile. She was like a little ray of sunshine. Whenever we went to
Publix to buy groceries, she would hold my hand and pull me around
the store, like a little girl. She probably used to do the same
thing with her grandma.

But she was still a drug addict. Every day
she asked me to drive her to these two trap houses in Pine Manor,
or to some motel so she could buy drugs from Las Vegas. I was
getting more and more uncomfortable. I really didn't want to keep
doing that. The law of probability said that sooner or later we
would get arrested on one of these drug runs.

One time we saw a police raid in progress at
the trap house we were headed to. If we had gotten there 5 minutes
earlier, we would have gotten arrested.

I wanted to help her get clean, and show her
that a sober life is worth living, not drive her to trap houses and
enable her to be a drug addict and watch her degrade herself on
Backpage while she's slowly killing herself.

More and more often, she locked herself in
my bathroom as soon as we came home, and she smoked crack for
hours, until every last crumb was gone. Then, as soon as she got
out of the bathroom, she wanted me to take her back to Pine Manor,
to buy more crack. It all seemed so familiar again. Haley used to
do exactly the same thing.

I told Lucy I didn't like that she kept
locking herself in the bathroom for hours, and that I didn't want
to keep driving her to these drug places. We started fighting, and
she had Las Vegas pick her up at my place in the middle of the
night.

Meanwhile she had violated her probation,
because she never reported to her probation officer. He issued a
warrant. The cops arrested her a day or two later, while she was
staying at the La Quinta.

She called me from jail and told me she
loved me. Her bond was $10,000, so the bondsman's fee was $1000.
She asked me to bail her out. I told her I wouldn't, because she
was totally off the chain and she really needed to get clean, and
this was her chance to sober up.

She had called her aunt Nicole from my place
a few times, and had given my number to Nicole and Nicole's number
to me. We friended each other on Facebook. Nicole and I were the
two most important people in her life at this point, so Lucy wanted
us to be able to call each other, to let each other know how she
was doing, once she went to jail. She had known that it was only a
matter of time before her probation officer was going to issue a
warrant, and she wanted to be prepared.

I called Nicole and told her Lucy was in
jail, and that she had asked me to bail her out, but that I didn't
want to.

I was so happy when I spent time with Lucy
every day, but now that she was in jail, I started to get depressed
again. And I started to think about Veronica again. Not because I
wanted to get back with her. I hated her. I just remembered the
pain she had caused me, and it still hurt. Thinking about Veronica
was nothing but pain and misery. Thinking about Lucy made me happy.
Without Lucy, there was nothing for me in Florida right now, so I
went to New York again.

"Please don't bond Lucy out. She's going to
end up dead if she keeps going the way she's going. She needs time
to think about her life with a clear, sober mind," Nicole told me
on the phone.

Nicole was a drug addict, too. She had been
in prison for two years, and got out about 3 or 4 months before I
met Lucy. She said prison saved her life, because it gave her a
chance to sober up and think about her future. She had been clean
since she got out and started her own little lawn care business.
She went to church and AA meetings regularly.

Lucy called me a few times every day while I
was in New York, and she told me she loved me and wanted to be my
girlfriend. I told her I loved her, too. I really had been getting
very attached to her when we spent all that time together. She was
so lovable, I couldn't help but fall for her.

She told me she wanted me to come back from
New York and get her out of jail. She said if I'd bond her out,
she'd like to come live with me, because she was happy whenever we
spent time together. I loved the idea of her coming to live with
me. Spending time with her, cuddling with her, being led around by
the hand, or getting one of her random little kisses made me so
happy. It was impossible not to love this sweet little girl.

But I still wasn't going to bail her out,
because I knew that no matter what she said right now, as soon as
she got out, she'd be smoking crack nonstop again, and she'd be
back in some cheap motel room, sucking some guy's dick, and then
giving all her money to Las Vegas. I couldn't stand the thought of
anyone else touching her. I was starting to feel possessive and
protective of her. That's how I knew I was starting to have real
feelings for her. I loved her, and I didn't want to share her with
anyone else.

Nicole told me she was worried this guy Cho
might bond Lucy out. Lucy had told me about some of her regular
"clients." One guy paid her a lot of extra money so she would kiss
him during sex. So she did, even though she really didn't want to.
When he started running low on money, he couldn't afford to pay
extra for kissing anymore, so she stopped. He got upset about that.
I don't remember if that was Cho or someone else.

Anyway, Cho was one of her sugar daddies. He
was a short, fat, bald Vietnamese guy in his early 50s, who was a
pharmacist at one of the hospitals in Fort Myers. He was infatuated
with Lucy, and when he realized that she was on drugs, he started
to keep feeding her crack, so she would hang out with him. And he
started to smoke crack too, to have something in common with her.
What a fucking moron!

She told me Cho wanted to be in a
relationship with her, but that she obviously wasn't really into
him, and that she was just using him whenever she needed money, or
a new phone, or clothes.

When she called me from jail, I asked her if
she was still talking to Cho. She said no, that she had stopped
talking to all other guys, and I was the only one in her life.

Afterwards I called Nicole and asked her if
that was true. She said: "No, Lucy is lying. She's still talking to
Cho, because she's hoping to con him into bailing her out."

When Lucy called me back later that day, I
told her I didn't believe that she was no longer talking to
Cho.

"It's true. I told him I want nothing to do
with him anymore, and that I'm with you now," Lucy said. "You can
call him and ask him yourself."

"Ok," I called her bluff. "What's his
number?"

She purposely gave me a wrong number. But I
hacked her phone and got the right one. I called Cho and introduced
myself. I told him what Lucy had said. As it turned out, she was
telling him the same story she was telling me. She didn't tell him
she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. Instead she told him she
loved him and wanted to have a future with him, and come live at
his house after he bailed her out.

Considering I wanted her to be sober when
she was going to live with me, but Cho fed her crack, it was
obvious to me where she would end up. She would choose drugs over
me, just like Alice and Veronica did.

I was still talking to him, comparing
stories, when Lucy called me back and asked me what I was doing. I
told her I was still on the phone with Cho.

"No you're not," she said. She knew she had
given me a wrong number, so she didn't think I was really able to
talk to him. "Well, if you're talking to him, good. Then put him on
a threeway, so I can tell him that I want nothing to do with him
and that I'm with you. Right now, in front of you, so you can
listen."

"Ok," I said, and called her bluff again. I
merged the calls. Now Cho, Lucy and I were all on the phone
together. She was startled and didn't know what to say for a
second. She had to think quick.

Then she said: "I'm going to be with Cho,
because he's going to bail me out."

I pretended to be shocked: "What? That's not
what you said two minutes ago! What the fuck? Well, good luck with
that. Never call me again!"

Then I hung up. Lucy called me right back
and said: "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it! I just had to say that
because you put me on the spot. I love you and I want to come live
with you. But I really want to get out of jail, and you said you
won't bail me out, so I have to have Cho bail me out instead."

I guess in a drug addict's mind that makes
sense. But if my parents ever argued over money, it would never
ever occur to my mother to tell my stepdad: "Well, if you won't
come up with the money I want, I guess I'll tell some other guy I
love him and ask him for the money instead." Only sociopaths and
drug addicts think it's ok to do that sort of thing.

Ever heard about the sociopath test? It's a
little riddle that floats around the internet:

A girl attended the funeral of her own
mother. There she met a guy whom she did not know. He was her dream
guy. She fell in love with him at first sight. However, she never
asked for his name or number and afterwards could not find anyone
who knew who he was. A few days later the girl killed her own
sister. Why did she do it?

Supposedly a sociopath will figure out the
correct answer to this riddle pretty quickly, while a normal person
will be stumped.

So, can you figure it out? No pressure. Nooo
pressure. Take your time.

Alright, I'm not gonna keep torturing you.
Well, if you're a sociopath, you already know the answer: she
figured that if the guy showed up to her mother's funeral, then he
might appear at another family member's funeral as well.

The point is that sociopaths don't care who
they hurt to get what they want.

Anyway, I was really upset when Lucy acted
like it was no big deal that she had been telling Cho and me the
same story. To her it really wasn't a big deal. It was just
business as usual. It's what all drug addicts do. She said that
when she told me she loved me, it was the truth, but when she told
Cho she loved him, it was only to con him into bailing her out.

How was I supposed to trust someone like
that? This was the same kind of two-faced shit I hated about
Veronica and every other drug addict I had met so far. I wanted
nothing to do with her anymore. (How many times have I said that
sentence so far?)

A few days later, Cho paid the $1000 to bail
Lucy out. She went to his house with him. They smoked a bunch of
crack together and had sex. That thought made my skin crawl. Then
she wrote me a love letter, took a picture of it with her cell
phone, and texted it to me. Cho found her letter to me at his house
and kicked her out in the middle of the night.

She asked her aunt if she could stay with
her until I got back from New York, but Nicole lived in a halfway
house at the time and couldn't have Lucy there. The next morning,
Cho pulled the bail, and the bondsman took Lucy back to jail.

When Lucy called me, she told me that now
she was really done with Cho for good, and asked me to bail her out
again. She said since Cho had already paid the $1000 the first
time, all I had to do was sign some paperwork at the bondsman's
office and they'd let her back out. I told her again that I didn't
want to bail her out, at least not until I got back from New York.
I told her she needed to sober up, because the drugs made her do
really grimey things.

She swore once again that she wasn't talking
to Cho anymore. I didn't believe her. I put Cho, Lucy and myself on
a threeway call again, and it was a replay of the last time I had
merged the calls. She sold me out again and said she'd be with Cho,
because he'd bail her out.

Cho ended up having to pay another $1000,
because the bondsman said he forfeited the first $1000. Lucy got
out a second time, stayed with Cho, and smoked a bunch of crack
with him. But as soon as his paycheck was used up, she ran off into
the night. She had only been out for 3 or 4 days, when Cho pulled
her bail again, and she went back to jail a third time.

I was really sick and tired of Lucy's shit
at this point. She was no better than Veronica.

"Don't compare me to Veronica," Lucy said
angrily. "I'm nothing like her! I would never hurt you like
Veronica did."

Funny, Veronica used to tell me the same
thing about Alice.

The sad part was that Lucy really didn't
understand that she had already hurt me just like Veronica always
did. The part of her brain that's responsible for empathy didn't
work properly. It didn't really sink in that the things she does
actually hurt other people. All she did was lie, cheat, and
manipulate people to get what she wanted, like a typical
sociopathic drug addict.

I wrote her a nasty postcard and told her to
stop calling me.

"You know what the great thing about babies is? They
are like little bundles of hope. Like the future in a basket."

Lish McBride

"The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey
pure love are dogs and infants."

Johnny Depp

Meanwhile I had run across Veronica's new
Facebook page. Once her dad picked her up from jail in June 2013,
he brought her to the 2 bedroom condo he had rented for her at
Forestwood Apartments on Brantley Road.