The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers Read online

  I had a hard time seeing the link between love and abuse. Then again, wasn't that exactly the same thing I always told myself about my ex-wife Donna's outbursts? She lost her temper all the time and threw hateful tantrums, if I didn't do exactly what she wanted. And I told myself it was a sign of how much she loved me, and how much she couldn't control her jealousy, because her feelings for me were so strong. But that was really just my way of coping with her emotional abuse.

  Anyway, Hussy called me hysterically crying one day, and said her mother had been arrested, because Hussy and her sister Amber had gotten into big fight. Amber was a drug addict and Hussy felt that Amber was not taking care of her two kids as well as she should. Hussy and Amber started hitting each other. Then their mother got in the middle of it. Someone called the cops, and their mother ended up getting arrested for smacking Amber.

  Now Hussy was frantically trying to get bond money to bail her mom out of jail, because she had a heart condition, and without her medication, she might have a heart attack in jail. I ended up giving Hussy $500 to bail out her mother. Or so I thought. A few months later I found out her mother really didn't go to jail that night. Dick did, after hitting Hussy, and she called the cops on him. So I had wired Hussy money to bail out her abusive "ex" boyfriend, who really wasn't her "ex" at all.

  After Linda had conned me into paying for several fake abortions in Pennsylvania a year or two earlier, of course I was weary. I had my suspicion that Hussy may be lying about her mother going to jail. Then again, what kind of a person would lie about something like that? And Hussy was so upset at my doubting her at a time like this, she threw the phone on the floor in despair.

  Her father picked up the phone and texted me that Hussy was so upset about her mother going to jail, he was afraid she might try to kill herself again. Apparently Hussy had attempted suicide at least half a dozen times. This was not the time for annoying questions, I thought, so I wired her the money to get her mom out. Later I found out I really hadn't been texting with her dad. That was really Hussy pretending to be her dad texting me. How sick is that?

  A few weeks later her dad suddenly went to jail. Or so Hussy claimed. Once again it was a life or death situation, and Hussy was about to kill herself unless I was going to send her money to bail her father out. Later I found out that whole story wasn't true either.

  Then Amber died from a drug overdose. Hussy was distraught over the loss of her beloved sister. Sure, they had their fights. All sisters do. But deep down they loved each other. And now Hussy was beside herself with grief. Well, then later I found out there never was an Amber. Hussy had made her up. Amber was a figment of Hussy's imagination. Amber's two kids didn't exist either. But I didn't find all that out until much later.

  Anyway, one day, after Hussy and I had spent some time together again, I went to Home Depot to buy some paint for the new crown mouldings in my condo. At the check out, I noticed that both of my debit cards were missing from my wallet.

  I texted Hussy: "Damn! My ATM cards are gone. Did u see them lying around anywhere? Maybe I took them out of my wallet while paying some bills?"

  Hussy replied: "I'm gonna turn around and come right back to help u look for ur cards."

  I wrote back: "Nah, it's ok. I'm just gonna go home and look for them. If they're not there, I'll just cancel them."

  For some reason her reply made me suspicious. Her eagerness to drive all the way back to help seemed suspect. My instincts told me she had stolen my cards and now she was scared and she was only going to "help" look for them, so she could pretend to find them somewhere, while really pulling them out of her pocket.

  It reminded me of a joke Patty the drug counselor had told me: What's the difference between a drug addict and an alcoholic? An alcoholic will steal your wallet and then feel so guilty, he'll get drunk. A drug addict will steal your wallet, and then help you look for it.

  On that day two other people had been at my place. A lady who measured one of the bedrooms for a new carpet, and the handyman who had been working on the condo for the past few weeks. So I didn't just want to accuse Hussy of stealing my cards, unless I was absolutely sure.

  On my way home from Home Depot, the fraud department of my bank called to confirm some unusual activity on my personal debit card. I told them it had been stolen. They said that within the last hour, about $1000 had been charged to it at several different stores in the Coconut Point Mall, just down the street from my apartment. The suspicious charges began at 5:15 pm. Hussy had left my house at 5 pm. So obviously she had gone straight to the mall after she left my place and went on a wild shopping spree with my card, swiping it as a credit card, instead of a debit card, to get around the $500 daily spending limit.

  I told the bank that I think I know who took my card, but that I wasn't 100% sure. They told me to call the police and tell them who I suspected. The police could get a copy of the security tapes at the stores, and have me look at them to identify the thief.

  A few minutes later the fraud department called me again. This time they told me about suspicious activity on my business debit card. Someone had spent almost $1000 on that card in the past hour as well.

  Then I texted Hussy: "I talked to my bank's fraud department. They said I should call the police."

  "Yeah, definitely," she replied.

  "I don't want to do that yet though. I want to talk to u first."

  "Why? What do u mean?" she texted back.

  "The bank people told me the cops can get the stores' security tapes and I can identify the thief. So I want to talk to u first."

  "Are u saying I took ur cards?" she replied.

  "I'm just saying I want to talk to u in person first, because whoever took my cards is going to jail."

  That's when she broke down, and admitted that she stole them. She texted me that she didn't know what had come over her, and that stealing was totally unlike her. She said she was taking care of 7 children, and she just didn't know how to make ends meet, even with the money I had been giving her.

  I felt really bad for her, so I didn't press charges. I forgave her, because I figured, if I was in her shoes, and I was a single parent taking care of 7 kids, I too may do things I'm not proud of.

  A few days went by, and we made up. Suddenly, while we were having lunch at Bice, she mentioned that it was going to be her birthday the next day.

  "What? Why didn't you tell me that sooner? We could have done something nice for your birthday," I said.

  "It's ok. My parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, and growing up, I never had a birthday. So I'm used to nobody remembering my birthday or celebrating it," she replied.

  "Aww, that's so sad," I said. "Well, that's all the more reason to make this birthday extra special. How about I take you to Miami Beach tomorrow, and we go to the beach for a while and then we'll have dinner at a nice restaurant?"

  "I would love that! Thank you so much," she said with a big smile.

  A day or two earlier, while we were grocery shopping for her kids at Walmart on Colonial Boulevard, she had longingly stared at a laptop and mentioned that she was so broke, she didn't even have a computer.

  So I figured I'd make her birthday extra special by surprising her with that laptop she liked.

  When she came over the next morning, we drove down Alligator Alley to get to the East Coast. During the car ride, I handed her the gift-wrapped laptop. She was ecstatic. Once we got to South Beach, we went swimming and then had dinner at a fancy restaurant on Ocean Drive. She told me this was the best birthday of her life. That made me feel really good. At the last minute, without any advance notice, I pulled off a pretty nice birthday for her. Later I found out that day wasn't even her birthday. It was just a scam to get a new laptop.

  A few days later, I happened to check my bank account on the computer. I noticed a few checks I didn't recognize. Each one was for anywhere around $700 to $900. I clicked on each one, to see a scanned image of the front of the check. That wasn't my handwriting. All these che
cks were fake. Someone had stolen 8 checks from me, filled them out, and deposited them. Guess who? Hussy.

  She was not exactly a criminal mastermind, because she didn't even bother to make the checks out to cash. She actually made them out to herself, and then faked my signature. I have no idea how she thought she was going to get away with that. I called her up and screamed at her: "I just saw you stole checks from me. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!?"

  Hussy started to cry and told me that it had been a moment of weakness. She said she had stolen the checks on the same day she had stolen my debit cards, she just didn't cash them right away. She said her sister Amber's death had made her crazy with grief. And now that she had to take care of Amber's two young kids on top of her own 5 children, she had lost it.

  At this point I didn't know yet that the entire story about Amber was completely made up, but I had it with Hussy anyway. I had forgiven her after she stole my debit cards and charged $2000 on them. But now she had cashed 8 stolen checks, for a total of about $7000. This was not just a momentary lapse in judgment. There was method behind her madness. She cashed the stolen checks every few days. So she knew she was stealing from me again and again. There was no way I was going to let her get away with that. I was gonna put that fucking bitch in jail.

  She said she hadn't even spent any of the money, and that it was all still in her bank account. I told her: "You better be here tomorrow morning before 10 am and bring me back all my money, and the laptop, or I'm calling the cops!"

  I was going to call the cops either way, but I wanted to get my money and my laptop back first.

  The next morning she brought me the laptop and handed me $600. I looked at the cash and asked: "What is that?"

  Hussy was so nervous, while I counted the money, she threw up. Then she said: "That's all that's left. I don't know what happened to the rest. I thought it was all still in my account, but when I checked today, it was all gone, except the $600."

  "Get the FUCK outta here!" I said. She quietly cried, got in her car and left.

  As soon as she was gone, I called the Lee County Sheriff's office. They sent a deputy. I filed a report and told him what had happened. He asked me to describe Hussy, so I did. Then he asked me for her date of birth. Since we had just celebrated her birthday a few days earlier, I knew exactly when her birthday was.

  The deputy said: "I think I know who you're talking about, but that's not her date of birth."

  "Yeah, it is," I replied.

  "Come with me, we'll look at my computer," the officer said.

  On the dashboard laptop in his police cruiser, the officer pulled up Hussy's mugshot. She had a bunch of prior charges for writing bad checks. Yupp. That was definitely her in the mugshot, and her birthday was definitely not last week. And that's when I realized that we had celebrated a fake birthday just so that she could con me into buying her a laptop. Motherfucker! What kind of a sick, twisted psycho does something like that?!

  I told the officer that I wanted her to rot in jail for playing me like that. He said she would, but first I would have to speak to a detective in the financial crimes unit. The deputy said he was just here to take the report, but I would have to wait for a detective to actually work on the case. And that was going to take at least a week.

  "What am I supposed to do until then?" I asked. "If I don't talk to her anymore, she'll know something is up, and she'll skip town. Her parents recently moved to Ocala. So she'll probably hide up there."

  "If she tries to run, we'll issue a warrant," the officer said. "She can't hide forever. We'll catch her eventually. But for now, just pretend everything is ok, so she has no reason to run."

  So for the next few days, I pretended I had forgiven her, just like I had done when I found out about her stealing my debit cards. Hussy came over every day, as usual, and we had sex as usual, hung out, watched TV, or went to the mall, or out to eat.

  About a week later, a detective called me. I told him what she had done and that I wanted her to go to jail. He said he couldn't just go arrest her. He said he would have to call her into his office and talk to her first.

  A few minutes later, Hussy called me, hysterically crying: "You said you wouldn't call the cops!"

  "No, that's what I said when you stole my debit cards," I replied. "But you stole my checks on top of that. Of course I'm gonna call the cops. You psycho stole $7000 from me!"

  "If I have to go to jail, I'm going to lose my kids! DCF is gonna take them away from me! I can't live without my kids! If you press charges, I'm gonna kill myself!"

  "Don't worry," I said. "Just admit everything. If you cooperate, they'll take it easy on you. You'll probably just get probation, or you'll have to pay me back or something. You're not gonna go to jail."

  I was just lying to her to get her to confess everything to the detective. I wanted that bitch to go to jail so badly! I wasn't just mad about her stealing from me. My feelings were hurt, because she kept telling me she loved me, and then she just used me like that. And my pride was hurt, because she made a fool out of me. Now it was my turn to pay her back. And when someone fucks me over that bad, I get really vindictive.

  Hussy went to the Sheriff station and admitted everything. She gave a full confession. Then the detective called me: "Did you tell this girl she's not going to jail if she admits everything?"

  "Well, uhh, yeah. I didn't want her to run away," I said.

  "You can't promise something like that. Check fraud is a serious crime. Each check she wrote is an automatic 1 year in jail. She wrote 8 checks, so she's going to jail for 8 years," the detective explained.

  A few minutes later, after Hussy left the Sheriff station, she called me up, sobbing: "I'm not going to jail! I'm not losing my babies! I'm gonna kill myself! If you press charges I'll kill myself! I've tried to kill myself many times, but this time I'll really do it!" She was crying so hard, it was difficult to understand her.

  I have a soft heart. I guess I'm what they call a bleeding heart liberal. When someone fucks me over, instead of feeling bad for myself, I end up feeling bad for them, because I think about what happened in their lives to make them the way they are. What got them to this point? If I went through what they went through, wouldn't I be at the same point now, doing the same things?

  I wanted Hussy to go to jail for a bit. Maybe 6 months. Maybe even a year. But 8 years? Wow, that was harsh! Yeah, DCF would definitely take her kids away, and yeah, I really could see her kill herself over that. I didn't want to live with that guilt. So I called the detective back and told him to drop the charges.

  Hussy and I didn't talk to each other for a few days, but she kept calling me over and over, asking me to forgive her, and that she loved me, and she wanted to make it up to me. A few days later I caved, and she started coming over again, and we had sex two or even three times every day again. At that point I didn't know yet that she was still with her "ex" Dick, and that they were living in my duplex together.

  Easter was coming up. I took Hussy to Walmart to pick out some clothes for her kids, and candy. We planned to spend Easter together. But then, the day before Easter, she said her parents were coming down from Ocala, and they were going to bring along some other relatives, and that they were all a bunch of rednecks who argued at family gatherings, and that I wouldn't enjoy being around them. So suddenly our plans were cancelled. I was all alone on Easter.

  That really bummed me out. Easter isn't that big a deal to me. Being alone on Christmas or my birthday would have been a lot worse. But just the fact that, for the first time in my life, I was spending a major holiday all alone, really got to me. Up until now, I had spent every holiday with my parents, or my ex-wife Donna, or my ex-girlfriend Alice. But now Hussy totally left me hanging on a big holiday. I was depressed. I felt really alone.

  I spent Easter playing around on Facebook. I stumbled across Hussy's Facebook page. I didn't even know she had one. On her page, she was posting in real time about her Easter. Her family had not come down from
Ocala. That was just another one of her lies. In fact, she posted on her Facebook page how much she missed her family this holiday. Instead she was spending Easter with her own little family at home: Dick and the kids. That was the moment when I found out she had been lying to me for months, about having left her "ex" and being a single mother. None of it was true.

  I was really upset. I got on a plane and flew to Europe for a few days. Hussy had been trying to come over the day after Easter, but I wouldn't answer her calls or texts. She got scared and asked me why I was ignoring her. I texted her that I had found out the truth about her and Dick living together in my house and that I wanted nothing to do with her anymore. We didn't talk to each other for a few months.

  I wanted to get them out of my house. At first I was going to evict them, but apparently that takes a long time in Florida. So instead I just sold the duplex, with them in it, on Ebay. A real estate investor in New York bought it. I told him that the tenants were nothing but trouble, with criminal records and a history of domestic violence. He thanked me for the heads up and evicted them.