are about twelve feet square. They feature tall wooden
cases full of red-spined lawbooks; Wang computer monitors; telephones;
Post-it notes galore. Also framed law diplomas and a general excess of
bad Western landscape art. Ansel Adams photos are a big favorite,
perhaps to compensate for the dismal specter of the parking lot, two
acres of striped black asphalt, which features gravel landscaping and
some sickly-looking barrel cacti.

It has grown dark. Gail Thackeray has told me that the people who work
late here, are afraid of muggings in the parking lot. It seems cruelly
ironic that a woman tracing electronic racketeers across the interstate
labyrinth of Cyberspace should fear an assault by a homeless derelict
in the parking lot of her own workplace.

Perhaps this is less than coincidence. Perhaps these two seemingly
disparate worlds are somehow generating one another. The poor and
disenfranchised take to the streets, while the rich and
computer-equipped, safe in their bedrooms, chatter over their modems.
Quite often the derelicts kick the glass out and break in to the
lawyers' offices, if they see something they need or want badly enough.

I cross the parking lot to the street behind the Attorney General's
office. A pair of young tramps are bedding down on flattened sheets of
cardboard, under an alcove stretching over the sidewalk. One tramp
wears a glitter-covered T-shirt reading "CALIFORNIA" in Coca-Cola
cursive. His nose and cheeks look chafed and swollen; they glisten
with what seems to be Vaseline. The other tramp has a ragged
long-sleeved shirt and lank brown hair parted in the middle. They both
wear blue jeans coated in grime. They are both drunk.

"You guys crash here a lot?" I ask them.

They look at me warily. I am wearing black jeans, a black pinstriped
suit jacket and a black silk tie. I have odd shoes and a funny haircut.

"It's our first time here," says the red-nosed tramp unconvincingly.
There is a lot of cardboard stacked here. More than any two people
could use.

"We usually stay at the Vinnie's down the street," says the
brown-haired tramp, puffing a Marlboro with a meditative air, as he
sprawls with his head on a blue nylon backpack. "The Saint Vincent's."

"You know who works in that building over there?" I ask, pointing.

The brown-haired tramp shrugs. "Some kind of attorneys, it says."

We urge one another to take it easy. I give them five bucks.

A block down t