20

“Take off your wedding ring,” Joe said. His eyes were fixed on the road in front of us, his hands cemented to the steering wheel. “It’s better if these guys don’t know you’re my wife.”

I slipped the unadorned gold band off my finger and tucked it into the back pocket of my purse, next to our house key. It was a chilly mid-winter day, everything around us hard and gray from the weeks of cold. Even with the car’s heating vents all the way open, I couldn’t seem to get warm.

“As far as they know, your role doesn’t go beyond paralegal. Introduce yourself as Jennifer. If they ask for a last name, use your maiden name.”

We arrived at the nondescript strip center where the Jaworski deposition was to take place, but Joe drove past it and turned the car into the parking lot of an abandoned building down the street. He put it in park and turned to me. There was something in his eyes, something so unfamiliar that I had trouble placing it. Stress, for sure. But I could have sworn I also saw fear.

“Do you have the camera?”

I fumbled with the canvas bag at my feet. “Yes.”

“Videotape?”

“Yes.”

“Backup tapes?”

“Yes.”

I pulled out the main tape we would use, a mini-DV cassette. As part of my preparation, I’d pressed a fresh label across the front and written the date and client name with a black marker.

“That’s the wrong date.” Joe grabbed the tape out of my hand. “Do you have another label? We’ve got to be more careful about that.”

I did a double-take before I reached into the bag for a new label. Small mistakes didn’t usually upset him. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I will be when this case is over,” he said. He reached into the bag at my feet and handed me a sheet of paper that another paralegal had typed up, titled with the con artist’s name, Eric Rayburne. Now that Mr. Jaworski was bringing a case, other victims had come forward and begun to tell their stories, many of them elderly or disabled. There was a widowed woman in Amarillo whom Rayburne had met in an online grief support group. He got to know her, convinced her to invest all her savings in a nonexistent business, and left her with an empty bank account. She had no children and had even lost the house she’d lived in for thirty years. Now she lived in a state-run nursing facility.

I scanned down the page, past stories of five thousand stolen here, a car “borrowed” and never returned there. At the bottom of the page I saw that a disabled woman had accused him of sexually harassing her daughter. She didn’t have much evidence and didn’t want to drag her child through court, but she was adamant that he’d done it.

I folded the paper and put it back in the bag. “What kind of lawyer would defend someone like that?”

“People tend to find lawyers with personalities like their own. His lawyer is Amos Adler, and they knew each other for years before this case.” He fixed the mislabeled tape, his motions jerky as he ripped a new label off the sheet. While he worked, he recounted times that Adler had been caught in lies, and other occasions when Adler had exploded into the phone and seethed with threats and insults when they disagreed. It got so bad that Joe started telling Adler that he was taping their phone calls to moderate his bad behavior. When Joe’s attorney friends found out whom he was up against, they all told him to try to get off the case. Nobody wanted to go into any detail, but everyone who had encountered this man grew grave when his name came up.

After recounting a particular call in which Adler laughed about a new accusation of fraud against his client, Joe grew quiet. “I hate him,” he finally said. “I’m not using the word lightly, either.” There was a darkness in his demeanor, and I had only ever seen it when he talked about this case.

* * *

At the deposition site, we stepped out of the car and into a swirl of dead leaves and dirt whipped around by the winter wind. Just inside the double doors at the entrance of the building, I saw two men talking.

“That’s them,” Joe said. He glanced down at my ring finger before he started forward.

I slung the heavy bag of video equipment and file folders onto my shoulder and stepped slowly toward the entrance. As the figures behind the glass took form, my heart thumped faster as I prepared to meet them. My jaw was rigid, the muscles in my shoulder as hard as steel.

Joe entered before I did, and one of the men said something to him. He was now interacting with both of them, and I stopped, wondering if I should get my mobile phone out in case someone started swinging. They seemed to be exchanging only words for now, so I pushed the glass doors open and entered the building. The man to Joe’s left had thick, yellowed hair, recently smoothed back by a comb. He stopped his conversation and stared at me. Fear surged under my skin, and I instinctively took a step back.

His face relaxed into an eager smile, and he coasted toward me with his hand extended. “Hello there!” When we shook hands, he clasped his other hand around mine for a moment. “I’m Eric. So nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” I sputtered. “I’m Jennifer—” I stopped, remembering. “Bishop. Jennifer Bishop.”

“You must be Joe’s paralegal,” he said, releasing my hand gently. “This is my lawyer, Amos Adler.”

Adler acknowledged me with a nod before returning his attention to Joe. He wore a dark suit over black cowboy boots, and a crisp white shirt without a tie. His face was long and large, topped by wispy graying hair. There was something troubling about his demeanor, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. Maybe Joe had biased me, but whatever I sensed about this man was so strong that I felt certain that he would have caught my attention, even if I’d had no idea who he was.

Rayburne was about to say something else to me, but his attention suddenly focused over my shoulder. I turned around to see Mr. Jaworski’s hunched figure silhouetted in the doorframe, a nurse leading him by the hand. I instinctively flashed my attention to Rayburne to gauge what level of confrontation was about to transpire. I was shocked by what I saw on his face. It was just a flicker of an expression, so brief that I would have missed it if I hadn’t turned around at that moment. It wasn’t rage or vengefulness that I would have expected. Instead, it was hurt—genuine, spontaneous hurt.

We all moved in to the deposition site, and I got to work setting up the video camera. The conference room was a narrow, windowless space with a bank of fluorescent lights overhead. It was as if the glare of the lights sucked all the oxygen out of the room, leaving only an airless haze.

Adler and Rayburne took the chairs on the side of the table that faced the door. Mr. Jaworski and Joe sat directly across from them. Joe and Adler watched one another’s every move so closely that when Adler dropped his pencil, Joe jumped. Before we began, Adler asked the nurse to leave the room.

Joe argued about it, knowing that Mr. Jaworski would be more comfortable with her there, but, ultimately he dropped it. He wanted to get the deposition over with and not give Adler any excuse to delay it further, since Jaworski was old and in poor health.

Adler leaned back in his chair. His eyes filled with a serpentine stillness as he looked across the table. “How old are you, Joe?”

Joe didn’t answer. He continued ordering the stack of papers in front of him, setting them into piles by type.

“I asked you a question,” Adler said, raising his voice.

Joe didn’t look up. “That’s none of your business.”

“How many years have you been practicing law?”

Joe snapped his head to me. “Jennifer, start recording now. I want this on video.”

My fingers shook as I fumbled for the red button. Adler sat up in his seat and addressed Mr. Jaworski. “I wish you luck, sir. You’re going to need it.”

The deposition began. A clear, tenor voice, as smooth as a song, came from the other side of the table. I looked up to see that it was Rayburne speaking. “I met Mr. Jaworski at the church where I was a volunteer prayer minister,” he said in answer to something Joe asked. His face exuded a wistful ease, his eyes focused far in the distance, as if he were reliving treasured memories.

“When did you first approach my client about investing money in your business?” Joe asked.

Rayburne seemed gentle, almost vulnerable, in contrast to Joe’s direct, businesslike tone. “It was really more his idea than mine. I asked him to pray with me about it, and when he found out that I needed investors, he volunteered.”

Joe scratched a note. “Did you tell him that the business did not exist?”

“Objection!” Adler barked. “Watch it.”

“Mr. Adler, it is a matter of record that your client was not operating a business at that point in time.”

Rayburne jumped in. “You’re right, Mr. Fulwiler. I wasn’t.” He lowered his head. “I’m not so good at this kind of thing. I didn’t know about incorporation and all of that. I was running the business out of my kitchen.”

“Do you have any paperwork that shows that you were doing business?”

“Nope. Afraid I don’t. I never could get any deals going.”

Joe pointed to a line on a spreadsheet. “What about the trip to Italy? You went there five weeks after a ten-thousand-dollar check from Mr. Jaworski was put into your bank account.”

He nodded, making casual, confident eye contact with Joe. “Research. I was aiming to start a business supplying healthy meals to nursing homes, juvenile facilities, other residential places like that. I went to Italy for training.”

“Do you have any receipts from cooking schools, classes, anything like that?”

“No. It was all private lessons. I paid cash.”

Joe moved his pen one row down. “The Mediterranean cruise?”

“I had to relax!” he said, his voice slipping into a whiney tone, the first time I’d seen him show any signs of stress. “I was working my butt off over there in Italy. I put all my love into this business. All of it. Yes, I took a cruise. But it was after working away, taking lesson after lesson, all day every day for two weeks!”

He rubbed his temples. I shot my hand up to rub my own forehead. No matter how deeply I inhaled, I couldn’t seem to get enough air. Things were going as well as could be expected, yet I wanted to get out of the room with the desperation of a person trapped in the hull of a sinking ship.

Joe slipped out another page from his stack of papers. “In June of 2002 my client gave you another twenty thousand. It was immediately transferred to an online poker website.”

“Yeah, that was a mistake, okay? It was a mistake. But I was trying to raise money for the business. I guess I have a gambling problem—I ought to get treatment for it—but at the time I thought I could make some money and get this thing going.” His face grew red, his motions more erratic.

Joe kept reading. “Another six thousand to something called ‘Lacy’s Erotica’?”

Rayburne smacked the table so hard it made me jump. “I said I had to relax! I’m not crazy about the name either, but it’s a legal massage parlor. Lacy just uses the name because it gets her free word-of-mouth advertising. You know how people talk. But it’s a legitimate massage therapy center.” His eyes shimmered with indignation as he thrust his finger at the elderly man across from him. “I put everything into this business. Now he is dragging me through the mud, making me talk about every embarrassing mistake I ever made, all because he’s pissed that he made a bad investment!”

I was standing behind Mr. Jaworski and could only see the back of his head, which shook almost imperceptibly, as if he had early Parkinson’s.

Rayburne shoved his chair back from the table and cupped his hand over his mouth. A single tear slipped down his cheek. The room was silent except for his sniffling as he wiped his hand over his face and struggled to regain composure. “I love to cook. Back when I was a little boy, my dream was always to bless people through cooking. It was my whole life’s dream. I thought that Ray Jaworski shared that with me.”

Mr. Jaworski began to speak, but Joe held up his hand to stop him.

With an expression that glowed with conviction and sincerity, Rayburne addressed Jaworski directly again. “I am sorry, Ray, that it didn’t work out. I thought we’d build something great together, too, that we’d help folks.” A sob welled up, but he choked it down. “I wish the money wasn’t gone, too. But I don’t know why you’re doing this to me.” With the final words, the tears got the best of him, and he began to weep openly.

I caught myself. Witnessing the innocent honesty that he exuded, it would be so easy to tell myself that I was looking at a well-meaning guy who had simply made a few mistakes.

I pictured the old widow in Amarillo, sitting alone in a run-down nursing home room, looking around at her last few possessions as she remembered her beloved house. I thought of all his other victims, vulnerable people whose life circumstances left them unlikely to pursue a court case. I looked at Rayburne. He was drying his tears with the collar of his polo shirt.

Oh, no . . . A realization rolled over me like thunder. This man isn’t lying. He believes it.

My head throbbed to the point that I was dizzy. Ever since I’d been in the presence of Rayburne and Adler, I’d felt physically ill. My breathing quickened, and I closed my eyes to steady myself.

“Your paralegal is having a problem over there, Joe,” Adler said. He smirked, as if he took perverse pleasure in my weakness.

Joe snapped around, his face tense with concern. He caught himself and straightened up to address me with intentional offhandedness. “Are you okay?”

“No.” I darted toward the door, not caring whether I was still needed in the room. “I need to step outside for a second.”

I ran down the empty hall and shoved open the double doors that led to the parking lot. It was cold, colder when the gusts of wind ripped by, and I’d left my jacket in the conference room. I didn’t care, though. I drank in the fresh air, inhaling until my lungs hurt, but it wasn’t the air that refreshed me—it was being away from Rayburne and his lawyer. I leaned against the locked car, trying to process what I’d just seen.

When I considered what I experienced in that room, there was only one word that came to mind: evil. And when I considered how it had operated, I knew that I’d never see the world the same way again.

When I used to come across tales of people committing atrocities, I would promptly decide that they were Bad People. This was a tidy conclusion that contained the problem of evil in a box and placed it on a distant shelf, safely away from my own life. Because I was a Good Person. And while Good People might occasionally make honest mistakes, we didn’t get involved in anything seriously evil. After all, we weren’t Bad People.

All my life I had imagined that, as a Good Person, under no circumstances would I have anything to do with evil. If I’d been a Hutu in 1990s Rwanda, I would have stood against the mass murders of the Tutsi. If I’d been a German in the 1940s and had friends who were getting involved with the Nazis, I would have decried their sickening ideals. If I’d lived here in Texas a couple hundred years earlier than I did, I would have been a tireless abolitionist. From the moment I could think about such things until the moment I walked into the deposition room, that idea was at the foundation of my identity.

And now, out in the parking lot, with dead leaves scuttling across the ground in front of me, I understood that it was supremely unlikely that that was true. In each of those examples, large segments of civilization bought into the evil, so the odds were not in favor of my being one of the few crusaders for good. So how could it happen? How, then, could people like me, average folks who thought of themselves as Good People, get caught up in horrific crimes against humanity? Nobody ever wakes up in the morning and says, “What I am going to do today is evil, and I’m okay with that.”

When I thought through each of the examples of society-wide atrocities, examining them through the new lens I had gained in that deposition room, immediately I saw it: In every single case where people cooperated with evil, they used eloquent lies to assure themselves that what they were doing was actually good.

The Hutus had a story: The Tutsi had committed all sorts of atrocities in the past, they greedily hoarded way too much of the wealth, and they were plotting to wipe out the Hutu any minute—so, really, murdering them was simply an act of self-defense. The Nazis had a story: The Aryan race was just trying to create good and beautiful things, but the Jews kept tearing it all down. Jews enslaved the poor Aryans by lending them money and jacking up the interest rates, and they had nefariously worked to cause the devastating November Revolution of 1918 while the German men were out risking their lives in the war. The slaveholders had a story: The Africans were subhuman; the owners were, in fact, doing them a favor by exposing them to civilized culture and supplying them with food and shelter.

And, of course, Rayburne had a story. He hadn’t stolen that old man’s life savings for personal purposes. He simply got Mr. Jaworski to invest it, and perhaps he had made a mistake or two in the formation of his business. There was always a story—a lie. Every time.

In that instant my Good Person armor fizzled away like droplets on a hot stove, and I was left exposed against the awareness that there was no ontological difference between me and the genocidal Hutus or the Nazis or the slaveholders; the difference between me and them was merely the difference between truth and lies. Whether or not any one of us is a Good Person or a Bad Person can fluctuate from day to day, from moment to moment, depending on the number of lies we allow ourselves to believe.

I felt vulnerable standing in the empty parking lot, suddenly aware that evil was closer to me—had always been closer to me—than I had ever understood.