He gravitated to Ganga White, widely regarded as the premier yoga master on the West Coast. White maintained his studio in the Santa Barbara foothills under the aegis of the White Lotus Foundation.2 Sting became a regular and eventually, a member of its advisory board.
Leonard approved. “I always thought Ganga was a fine teacher,” he said.
So did Skinner, who maintained that Ganga was a reliable customer for controlled substances.3 As a matter of fact, a grand jury scheduled White to spill what he knew on the subject the first week of January, and both Skinner and Pickard thought it might be a good idea to listen in. Like several other guests at the San Souci party, Ganga was unaware of the swimming pool project. They tried to wire him with a transmitter microphone disguised as a pen, but it was another James Bond scheme gone awry. They heard only garble.
Money, it seemed, had become the root of all evil. Before the party, Petaluma Al dropped by to see Pickard about bringing his account up to date. According to Skinner, Leonard separated Al’s $750,000 delivery into stacks of $100s and hid them at San Souci—money earmarked for the ET that Pickard had ordered during his recent London trip. Unfortunately, Skinner found the cache first.
After months of coddling Pickard, Skinner said he was getting sick of his cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Around the time of the San Souci gathering, Skinner recalled picking up the phone and hearing Pickard on the other end disguising his voice: “This is Carlos. I need a precursor out of Aldrich. A couple of kilograms of it or more.”
Translation: Leonard wanted Todd to order more supplies from Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Co. Why couldn’t he just say that? Everything with Pickard smacked of second-rate James Bond, said Skinner.
“A convenient, unverifiable tale,” countered Pickard. “Skinner could go on for hours like this, once he knew what you wanted to hear.”
During Leonard’s absence from San Souci, Skinner continued, he went on a scavenger hunt. He found a bunch of bills buried inside a tool box in the garage. They included Dutch Guilders and a pile of Canadian cash, as well as lots and lots of good old American greenbacks. Substituting $20s for $100s, Skinner topped each bundle with a Benjamin. He guessed that Pickard would not bother to count it all. Later, Skinner estimated he made off with between $200,000 and $300,000. He justified the theft as half the rent on San Souci, plus ongoing reimbursement for Pickard’s lavish travel expenses.
It was harder to justify renting a Porsche for $20,000. What of it? Skinner deserved a nice ride.
And Sting deserved the best sound system. To that end, Skinner hired the Sacramento audio engineer who installed his high-end stereo in the missile silo. Chris Malone was only too happy to oblige. Todd had recently ordered a pair of $80,000 speakers from him and usually paid in cash. San Souci was no exception.
“He carried around one of those silver bulletproof briefcases full of cash,” recalled Malone. “When me and the guy I brought with me to put in the system finished, he tipped me $2,000 then turned to my helper and handed him $1,000.”
Basking in Sting’s reflected celebrity, Todd recalled Leonard behaving particularly squirrelly during the party. Superstars, particularly scientific luminaries, seemed to reduce Leonard to a fawning groupie who already stood out from the crowd in his full-length black leather overcoat and cowboy boots.
Pickard steered the very comely Natasha Kruglova from klatch to klatch, introducing her as his latest protégé—a Russian doll with a medical mind. She was applying to Berkeley, and Leonard curried favor on her behalf among the assembled psychonaut royalty. He aimed to see her past all admission obstacles.
For her part, Natasha clung to him like Scarlett to Rhett. Meanwhile, Todd skulked nearby, young Emily Ragan hanging on his every word.
Beside Sting and his entourage, Skinner said that the guest list included Kary Mullis, who’d earned a Nobel since the days when he and Pickard had experimented with bathtub acid at Berkeley.
“Kary attributes his insight into PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) to his acid experiences,” said Pickard. “The DNA image won him the 1993 Nobel Prize4 in chemistry.”
He added, however, that Mullis was not on the guest list. In fact, he did not attend the party at all except in Skinner’s imagination.
In Todd’s version, Pickard nudged Mullis and asked him if he recalled that first time they’d synthesized a gram together.
“And Kary split,” muttered Skinner, “because Nobel laureates don’t want that kind of baggage on them.”
While the swimming pool brass partied in Bolinas, their minions were on the move in New Mexico.
Clyde Apperson flew in to Albuquerque on Nov. 5. Two days later, Mike Hobbs rented a truck in San Rafael under the name “Bill Martin.” He then began the cross-country drive to rendezvous with Skinner and Apperson in Santa Fe, making a stopover to visit Ganga White in Santa Barbara on the way.
Skinner had secured Tim Schwartz’s silo the way he sealed most deals: by supplying Schwartz with drugs and lying. He promised to remodel the former missile base and turn it into another Wamego fantasyland in exchange for free rent. Schwartz responded with a signed handwritten permission slip: “Todd Skinner has permission to do anything with my missile silo—he is the boss.”
Pickard headed for Carneiro too, according to Skinner, but followed a different itinerary. A week after the party, he flew commercial to Colorado, where he boarded a charter to Santa Fe. There he picked up Trais Kliphuis and flew on to Manhattan, where they spent the Thanksgiving weekend at a Fairfield Inn.
He also called Natasha twice on the sly, said Todd. Ignorant of his tryst with Trais, Natasha arranged to meet Leonard at
