A government attorney becomes involved with the opposing counsel when he terminates a disgruntled employee. John McDowell is a lost and hopeless lifer, relegated to a gray metal desk in the L Street Annex of the Bureau of Regulation where he administers employee relation cases. The manager of the Bureau’s Information Branch, Henry Billotte, has suffered a nervous breakdown, quit his post, and become a street vendor. His crime against humanity is a hot dog stand parked on the Bureau’s 100th anniversary plaque in Regulatory Square. John McDowell is to apply any and all means to remove the blight from the portals of the Bureau. Billotte’s claim for psychiatric disability is represented by Jackie Cessna, a worsted wool lawyer on the make. She needs material for her firm’s Friday evening wine and cheese party. On Thursday morning she has nothing. She desperately needs to swagger up to the tweed lawyers gathered around the quarter-keg and top their tired-old, skirt-chasing braggadocio. Also by George Miller: The Bucklodge Flag Stop and Other Poems.