Chapter 3: On the Waterfront

THE PATTERSON MASSACRE was the last thing I did from my Capitol Hill apartment. At one time, I’d rented a room in an old house. My office had been the dining room. The living room was the waiting area. Upstairs, three bedrooms housed two counselors and an accountant. We all moved out the same day.

The garage where I kept my Mustang didn’t have much more than room for the car, but I managed to move my fireproof safe into a corner with the help of Eric and I stacked the new equipment that had never been online next to it. Digital files don’t take ‘real world’ space, but if you have to move the media and equipment to read them, it’s a little more difficult.

The next day, a wrecking company arrived and started tearing down the old house. The owner could make more money from a parking lot than he could from our meager rent. By mid-October, there was no sign that I’d ever had an office there.

The first thing I did after I got my new apartment was locate an office space. I’d never had an interest in separating my business and personal life, so my PI license was all I needed to function. I didn’t provide any goods or taxable services, so I didn’t need to file sales tax info. Washington has no personal income tax. Lars cooperated in setting up a shell corporation for DH Investigations that wasn’t tied to me personally. Don’t ask me what magic he worked, but my name didn’t appear anywhere but as a signer on the new checking account.

With a brand new business license and checkbook in hand, I went hunting for a new office. I was drawn almost at once to the Seattle Waterfront.

There are places along Alaskan Way that would make New York and Chicago look like city parks. But not most of it. The section running from the ferry terminal north to the Edgewater Inn was a busy, commercial area that led to the market up the hill. Tourist dollars fed the Waterfront. Unfortunately, the past year had been tough on the area. Disassembling the Alaskan Way Viaduct and digging a tunnel through the area to bury the highway kept traffic congested much farther along the area than just the ferry terminal. Big Bertha had kept the area vibrating with her grinding away at the bedrock nearby and demolition of the viaduct was scheduled to commence soon.

The result was that some businesses along the Waterfront had just closed up for the duration and a few of the property owners were struggling to find renters. That was the case when I found the warehouse on Pier 61.

The warehouse ran flush with the south edge for the full length of the pier. There was enough room on the north side of the warehouse that a semi could back in to be loaded or unloaded. Why they needed a pier was a mystery since there was no water traffic to it any longer. Somewhere in the distant past it had been an active shipping warehouse on the water. The major tenant was a fabric wholesaler. Who knew there was so much demand for bolts of cloth? A secondary import/export business occupied the last third of the pier. They dealt with teak furniture, carvings, Samurai swords, and African drums. In other words, if there was anything that didn’t actually have a use but you wanted, they probably had it.

Like anyplace that had cheap rent and a funky vibe, the artist community discovered it and a half-dozen lofts had been created. Most of those were empty. I got a good deal on a double, not quite at the end of the pier—nine months rent-free and built out to my specs in exchange for a five-year lease at a not-too-exorbitant monthly rate.

Only three things in the build-out required a permit. One was the installation of a high capacity air conditioning unit on the roof. The second was the bathroom plumbing and electrical power I needed. Finally, I required the windows be converted to a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. After the wiring and plumbing were complete, I acted as my own general contractor for the interior build-out. I hadn’t really reopened for business and wasn’t rushing to reestablish my identity online. So, I spent most of the winter puttering in the office, calling in a handyman here and there when I needed assistance. I even bought some tools that weren’t related to my computers. I had no real identity at the moment, but I had a business license that let me write checks and eventually even get a couple of low limit credit cards. Building out the space took me until February. Maizie was a big help.

After the final inspection, the real work began. I designed my space to conceal my server room, directly below the massive air conditioning unit. The combined total of the reception area and bathroom only took up two-thirds of the total width of my space. It was an optical illusion that made it look like it was the same size when you walked back into the office. I opened up the ceiling of the server room and installed a servo motor that would move a bookshelf in front of the opening to the server room. I could open it with the programmable remote control for the big flat-panel television mounted on the opposite wall. Of course, the television wasn’t required to use the remote to open the panel but justified me having it.