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smoking-related health problems. State your opinion on the issue of tax dollars being used to subsidize tobacco farmers. State your opinion on the issue of banning smoking in all public buildings. What rights do you think smokersshould have? Large empty spaces were available for these answers.
    Page four listed the names of the seventeen lawyers who were officially attorneys of record, then it listed the names of eighty more who happened to be in some related practice with the first seventeen. Do you personally know any of these lawyers? Have you ever been represented by any of these lawyers? Have you ever been involved in any legal matter with any of these lawyers?
    No. No. No. Nicholas made quick check marks.
    Page five listed the names of potential witnesses, sixty-two people including Celeste Wood, the widow and plaintiff. Do you know any of these people? No.
    He mixed another cup of instant coffee and added two packs of sugar. He’d spent an hour with these questions last night, and another hour had already passed this morning. The sun was barely up. Breakfast had been a banana and a stale bagel. He ate a small bite of the bagel, thought about the last question, then answered it with a pencil in a neat, almost tedious hand—all caps printed, because his cursive was ragged and barely legible. And he knew that before dark today an entire committee of handwriting experts on both sides would be poring over his words, not caring so much about what he said but more about how he formed his letters. He wanted to appear neat and thoughtful, intelligent and open-minded, capable of hearing with both ears and deciding matters fairly, an arbitrator they would clamor for.
    He’d read three books on the ins and outs of handwriting analysis.
    He flipped back to the tobacco subsidy question because it was a tough one. He had an answer readybecause he’d given much thought to the issue, and he wanted to write it clearly. Or maybe vaguely. Maybe in such a way that he wouldn’t betray his feelings, yet wouldn’t scare either side.
    Many of these same questions had been used in the Cimmino case last year in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Nicholas had been David then, David Lancaster, a part-time film student with a genuine dark beard and fake horn-rimmed glasses who worked in a video store. He’d copied the questionnaire before turning it in on the second day of jury selection. It was a similar case, but with a different widow and a different tobacco company, and though there’d been a hundred lawyers involved, they were all different from this bunch. Only Fitch remained the same.
    Nicholas/David had made the first two cuts then, but was four rows away when the panel was seated. He shaved his beard, ditched the pharmacy eyeglasses, and left town a month later.
    The folding card table vibrated slightly as he wrote. This was his dinette—the table and three mismatched chairs. The tiny den to his right was furnished with a flimsy rocker, a TV mounted on a wooden crate, and a dusty sofa he’d purchased at a flea market for fifteen dollars. He probably could have afforded to rent some nicer pieces, but renting required forms and left a trail. There were people out there practically digging through his garbage to find out who he was.
    He thought of the blonde and wondered where she might turn up today, no doubt with a cigarette close at hand and an eagerness to draw him into another banal chat about smoking. The idea of calling her hadn’t crossed his mind, but the question of which side she worked for was quite intriguing.Probably the tobacco companies, because she was exactly the type of agent Fitch liked to use.
    Nicholas knew from his studies of the law that it was highly unethical for the blonde, or any other hireling for that matter, to directly approach a potential juror. He also knew that Fitch had enough money to make the blonde disappear from here, without a trace, only to surface at the next trial as a redhead with a different brand