What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(34)

“Could have. The captain’s name was . . . Hold on; I’m having a senior moment. It was Jack something. Had to do with fire . . . It will come to me. Anyway, he’d pull in after dark, find David, and pay the daily moorage, always in cash.”

Cash likely meant under the table. “Did David keep a record of the cash payments?”

Another smile. “You might find a few just to keep things on the up-and-up.” Hopper snapped his fingers. “Jack Flynt—that was the captain’s name. Told you it would come to me. I ain’t dead yet. I’m good with names. I can remember the name of every kid in my grammar school. I relate them to things. Like Flynt to fire.”

“You said I might find some records just to keep things on the up-and-up.”

“Not you. I mean, I assume you’re on the up-and-up. David didn’t record every visit. You know what I mean?”

“Tell me.”

“Flynt paid cash, came in after management left, and was gone before they arrived next morning. It was a cool way to make some good cash money, and no one was ever the wiser.”

“You know this for certain?”

“You hang around docks long enough, you start to figure things out.”

“This Captain Jack Flynt was buying David Slocum’s silence?”

“Not like David was part of the drug operation Flynt was running. Nothing like that. I’m just saying it was a way for David to make a little extra money. We can all use help in that department.”

“But you thought this boat was running drugs?”

“I thought it.” Hopper smiled. “Then I knew it when David told me the police raided the boat and busted Captain Jack.”

There it was. “Were you here when that happened?”

“No.” Hopper shook his head and stretched out his legs. “I was in the Gulf of Mexico on an oil rig. Missed all the excitement. David told me when I got back.”

“What did he say?”

“They raided the Egregious. Came running down the pier with guns and face masks.”

“Face masks?”

“That’s what David said.”

“Did they identify themselves?”

“If they did, David didn’t hear it and didn’t know.” In her mind, Tracy saw Lisa Childress’s handwritten note. The Last Line. “David thought it was DEA or FBI. He had his own little grow operation to worry about. Thought they came for him. Scared the shit out of him.

When he realized they hadn’t, he wasn’t going to stick his prominent nose where it didn’t belong, and neither was I.”

“What did David say when you talked to him?”

“He said they came in fast and heavily armed. Put Captain Jack in handcuffs and hauled him and the boat away. David, being the harbormaster, had to get involved. He told me he fabricated a payment in the logbook that said the Egregious paid cash, so he wouldn’t lose his job. He couldn’t very well backdate all the records, because if he did, then the monthly income wouldn’t add up and the marina manager would know David was dipping into the company inkwell.”

“Did David have any way to quantify the amount of drugs Captain Jack had on board?”

“Their cash value?”

“Yeah.”

“No idea, but I can tell you that if Captain Jack was running cocaine, he could put an amount worth millions in briefcases. If he was running marijuana, that takes up more room, but he had a lot of room in the hull of the Egregious.”

“Best guess,” Tracy said.

“Best guess . . .” Hopper looked up at the sky and looked as if he was calculating and running numbers. “To run a load down from Vancouver it had to be something sizable. They weren’t going to make that trip for a few thousand or even a million. I’d guess you’re looking at ten to twenty million dollars. Maybe more.”

That was a big score, but Tracy wondered if Hopper was exaggerating for effect.

“How big a crew is needed to run a boat that big?”

“Not many. I’d say it was Captain Jack and the two Mexican crewmen.”

The comment again caught Tracy’s attention. “There were two Mexican men on board the boat?”

“Can’t say for sure since I wasn’t here, but David said two men floated up to the marina two days later and it was just too big a coincidence not to be from the Egregious. I remember he said they didn’t fall from the heavens.”

“Maybe it was a different boat.”

“And maybe pigs can fly, but I doubt it.”

“David call it in?”

“Had to.”

That was the case Moss Gunderson and Del worked. “The police show up?”

“David said they did. Twice in fact. He said a cop asked him a lot of questions about the Egregious, how often it came, and what kind of records David kept. He thought for sure he’d get busted, that the police would seek the records.”

“You said the police came twice?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Do you remember the names of the officers who came?”

Hopper chuckled. “I got a good memory for the minutiae, Detective Tracy, but not that good. Not from twenty-five years ago.

Just remember he said police came to talk to him.”