Nicola Griffith - Always

It took him a moment to change gears, but politicians live or die by their ability to seize a proffered alliance. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about your warehouse.”

“It’s a cross-shipping facility on Diagonal Avenue South.”

“Near the Federal Center?”

“Yes.”

“That whole swatch of Duwamish is designated wetland and the environmental lobby want it declared an estuarine restoration site. We couldn’t buy your land, of course, if you didn’t want to sell, though the recent rulings on eminent domain are interesting, but if the surrounding land were purchased by the city and protected, your plot would be almost impossible to develop.”

“Almost?”

“Impossible, period, if you want to make a profit.”

“It’s just a profit thing, then?”

“What else is there in real estate?”

I studied him. “I’ve read your first campaign statement: it is part of a city councillor’s job to be a steward of the city’s natural resources.”

He swiveled his chair this way and that. “That was a long, long time ago. In the years since, it has been represented to me, forcefully, that my job is jobs and profit.”

“Let’s pretend, just for a minute, that you still believe you are a steward of the city’s natural resources. Tell me about the wetland zoning, the estuarine restoration.”

“You really want to talk about the environment?”

I matched his former, light ironic tone. “What else is there in real estate?”

His expression didn’t change, but his cheeks pinked slightly and where his collar was tight against his neck, I could see his carotid pulse. Hope was something to be feared in politics.

I upped the ante. “I don’t need to make a profit. Tell me about the wetland. ”

He tapped his appointment book, thinking; opened it, checked his schedule. “Would you like some tea or coffee?”

I accepted. He left the room for a while. When he came back he was carrying two mugs of coffee and a large rolled map tucked under his arm. His face was damp and his hands smelled of lotion. He unrolled the map and anchored it to his desk with his coffee mug and appointment book.

“The Duwamish,” he said, pointing, unfastening one shirt cuff. “It used to teem with salmon and heron. You could dig oysters and shoot duck.”

I looked at the concrete-straight lines.

“Harbor Island, here, is a Superfund site.”

Spiky, industrial geometry of piers and jetties and pipelines where the Duwamish met Elliott Bay.

“As warehouses and industrial complexes close, we’ve been buying up land, slapping restoration orders on it, and waiting for the economy to turn around so we can remediate.”

“How much?”

“To do it properly?” He rolled up his sleeves while he mused. “Hundreds of millions. Just labeling the land ‘wetland’ costs a fortune. The regulations are tortuous.” He opened a filing cabinet and selected a stack of paper. “Here. Director’s Rule 6-2003, City of Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use: The Requirements for Wetland Delineation Reports. The whole thing is a rule about the presentation of the rules of the mapping of wetland. Thousands of words, none of which even begin to say what wetland is, and why it’s important.”

“But my land has already been designated wetland.”

“Yes, and that makes it possible for us to bid on it, when it comes up for sale, because of funds allocated in previous budgets and held in escrow. But the designation is wide open to challenge if someone wants to take our bid out of the running. Somewhere along the line, someone is bound to have broken some of the regulations, which means the designation can be thrown out. And right now the city doesn’t have the money to spend on resurveying. Even if it did, it would take a couple of years.”

“So getting the warehouse and adjacent land rezoned wouldn’t be hard.”

“No.”

“What would you do with the land if you wanted to make a big profit?”

“Mixed light commercial and residential. A marina, a restaurant, condos. ”

“In the middle of an industrial area?” But that was European thinking.

“There’s already a park.” He pointed more or less at my warehouse. “It’s a pocket park. Here, between your land and the Federal Center. On the water, opposite Kellogg Island.”

Kellogg Island was a tiny lump of land in the middle of the river that I hadn’t known was there. “It’s not marked.”

“It’s too new. But I opened it eight months ago. It’s a very sexy combination of industrial district surrounded by nature. Someone willing to drop seven figures on a pied-à-terre would buy one in a heartbeat.”

I wouldn’t have understood that a month ago, but I was beginning to. I studied the map. Gary had said that Corning had been talking about four adjacent plots of land. “Is the Federal Center up for sale?”

He paused, consulted some interior ethics monitor, and nodded. “They’re moving to facilities in Renton, though that’s not general knowledge.”

“Show me what’s their land.” He did. “And if you included my land, and the park, and, say, the two plots north of that, how much would it cost to develop as the kind of place you were thinking of?”

“Hard to say. Mid-eight figures.”

“Easy to get investors?”

“Very. With that park as the natural centerpiece, profit could be forty percent.”

“If the zoning were changed,” I said.

“If the zoning were changed.”

I WALKEDalong 34th, and between the bricks and mortar of the software industry, Getty Images, Adobe, Visio, I caught glimpses of the ship canal. I stopped and leaned against a low wall. A dilapidated fishing boat chugged by. I watched it as I called Gary. “Get me everything you can on those plots Corning was looking at. Get me estimates of value. Find out who the owners are, and if Corning has been in touch with any of them.”

At the corner of 34th and Fremont I passed a sculpture, of five people and a dog at a bus stop. Someone had recently added balloons and blinding green wigs, and signs around their necks saying Happy Birthday, Alyssa!! The sculpture was called Waiting for the Interurban. A hundred years ago the Interurban had been an electrified rail line running from Renton to Everett, cutting through the warehouse district. Not a bus stop. A commuter light-rail stop. Pity it had closed. I couldn’t remember when. Kick might know.

We had a perfectly lovely evening.

I drove back to the warehouse. I wanted to hear what Kick thought.

IN ATLANTA,the afternoon sky would be bluer, the sun yellower, the trees and grass more green, and the pause before rush hour would have sweltered, sticky with sap and insect song, only lightly sheened with hydrocarbon. Here, rush hour had already started. The Alaskan Way viaduct poured as slow and thick with cars as a carbon dioxide-laden pulmonary vein. I kept pace like a good little molecule, let myself be funneled in due order onto Diagonal Avenue, noting unmarked turnoffs, rail spurs, then the Federal Center, and pulling eventually into the half-full lot of the warehouse. I parked next to Kick’s van, but didn’t get out of the car.

I called Dornan. He answered on the second ring.

“It’s me. Is she there?”

“Where are you?”

“In the parking lot. Is she there?”

“She is not. But stay there. Please. I’m coming out. I want to talk.”

I got out of the car and leaned against the hood. The air was slithery with diesel but now that I was hunting for it, I also smelled the unmistakable rolling underscent of estuarine river. I closed my eyes and visualized the map in Hardy’s office. Very close.