Leonard leaned in, lowering his voice. The schoolteacher and Young in front of the same grand jury? Way too close for comfort!
Skinner said that Leonard explained his relationship with the ET Man this way: he would pay him $100,000 in Dutch Guilders per kilogram of ergotamine tartrate; Miller would then smuggle the powder out of Czechoslovakia hidden inside machine tool crates; the shipments crossed the Atlantic and next went to a middleman in Chicago, after which the final leg of the journey was made by truck to Santa Fe. There, Leonard transubstantiated the magic powder into lysergic gold.
Leonard maintained that he scrutinized every detail along the journey. He even had an inside man with US Customs.
According to Skinner, Pickard then pushed $300,000 across the table at him and told him to eliminate the threat of Young’s testimony. Skinner balked. He half-heartedly suggested a woman named Jessica Guinn. Perhaps she might be a potential assassin?
After cooling a bit, Leonard switched the conversation to kidnapping. Might Young be exiled to Central America?
Savinelli chimed in that he knew a dealer who could bring Rohypnol over the border. Hugo De La Llave2 made the Mexico run regularly. Dose Young with a handful of roofies and he’d still be asleep when they dumped him somewhere south of Yucatan.
Leonard didn’t dismiss the idea, but kept options open. Perhaps threatening Young’s parents would keep him quiet. If Leonard ingratiated himself to Mr. and Mrs. Young, he could snap a selfie with them. Then he could mail it off to Bruce, who’d get the message: we know where your family lives!
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said an exasperated Pickard years later, long after Skinner had sworn in open court that all his recollections were true.
They were true—sort of. According to the other two “conspirators” who were present that morning, keeping Young mum had indeed been discussed. But eliminating him? Come on. Both Savinelli and Halpern recalled a version quite different from Skinner’s.
The actual conversation was spurious if not flat-out tongue in cheek, they both agreed. For all his Queasy-inspired lunacy, Leonard was still capable of sarcasm, even irony. What went on over breakfast that morning was adolescent role-playing, not murder most foul. Such hokum, like most of the other outlandish elements in the mythos of the Acid King, sprang directly from the fertile imagination of Gordon Todd Skinner.
For the better part of the next two years, Skinner kept alive the illusion of his personal wealth. Through the magic of credit cards, he’d graciously pick up Pickard’s hotel and travel bills, only to recoup the money later, almost always with a hefty surcharge. Meanwhile, he one-upped the boss. When Leonard stayed in a luxury suite, Todd roomed in the penthouse. When Leonard rented a sedan, Todd got a sports car. When Leonard traveled business class, Todd chartered a private jet.
Todd boasted that he entertained shamelessly on Leonard’s dime. In April of 1998, a former Brotherhood member and his mate came down from Bolinas to visit Todd and his teen fiancé Emily Ragan while they luxuriated at San Francisco’s five-star Mandarin Hotel. Then a freshman at UC Berkeley, Ragan put her trust in Todd. He’d taken her down the Wamego rabbit hole regularly, dosing her and her friends on Eucharist, consummating their passion on the old oaken altar that Skinner called his bed. One besotted lass declared that Skinner “made the rain fall.”
Money was no object. Life was a nonstop thrill ride. When he suggested he and Emily join the Bolinas couple on a little acid trip, she agreed.
In his quasi-defense, Skinner later maintained that he believed the little brown vial the ex-Brotherhood member pulled from his pocket was LSD. Actually, it contained a white powder called 2-CB, first synthesized by Sasha Shulgin in 1974 and known by the street name “Nexus.” Dissolved in alcohol, Nexus approximated MDMA in its initial rush, though larger doses could bring on cartoonish hallucinations, weird voices, and a neon afterglow. The Dutch called the tablets Erox and sold them as an aphrodisiac stamped with little hearts.
But there was no ecstasy that April evening. By the time the symptoms of overdose developed, Emily lay stupefied on the bed, naked from the waist down. Skinner masturbated in another room, while the Bolinas couple blanked out in another bedroom.
Neighboring guests on the thirty-eighth floor began complaining downstairs to hotel management just before eight p.m. The front desk discreetly notified San Francisco Police.
When officers arrived, the suite door was open. Skinner was lying on the floor naked, hollering, “Somebody give me a blowjob! I wanna be fucked!” All four keening guests were handcuffed to gurneys and hauled off to the ER.
Police turned the entire incident over to Alameda County narcotics for follow up.
Had he been present, Pickard might have effected a different outcome. His ER training at San Francisco General could have deterred cop involvement. A veteran of many an OD, Leonard might have recognized the contents of the little brown vial as non-lysergic and its antidote easily administered. Valium cured all ills.
As it turned out, Pickard was indirectly involved in the Mandarin Hotel incident, just not in any obvious way. Skinner, Emily, and the Bolinas couple slid past police, but not their hotel bill. Todd said he asked Leonard for a little help and he sent $5,000 in cash. Tulsa police intercepted the FedEx package as suspected drug money, so Todd went back to the well. Leonard fronted him an additional $70,000.
As it turned out, Tulsa police could prove no connection between the $5,000 and drug sales. They finally gave up and released the cash to Skinner. Banking on Dr. Jekyll’s short-term memory, Skinner said nothing. He kept it all—both the $5,000 and the $70,000.
“Didn’t happen,” said Leonard. “I sent Skinner exactly zero. It would take a real rube to swallow that story.”
Providing endless details in the spinning of his yarns, Skinner claimed that Pickard stayed busy traveling the remainder of that year. In June, he was
