Leonard latched on to Sakai. He asked him to meet the first week of September at the Menlo Park office of web designer Deborah Lehman. Their purpose: to bring the swimming pool project into the Internet Age.
“I was extremely uncomfortable,” Lehman later told investigators. “It didn’t seem like what he was asking from us was a good match with what we do.”
Leonard handed Lehman $5,000 in cash and told her he wanted to develop three new websites: the first would promote Pickard’s UCLA research; the second would be called “futuredrugs.com,” a high-security link connecting researchers around the globe; and the third was a hub for offshore banking and tax-free havens like PILL. All were part of Leonard’s FEDS master plan to study international drug trafficking, he said.
“He grabbed my hand, thanked me, and left before I could tell him I didn’t want to work with him,” said Lehman. “He just left and I wasn’t sure what to do next. My feeling was this was drug money. I was scared of it.”
It was during this flurry of activity that Skinner, surrounded by DEA agents, recorded his first phone call. It began awkwardly. He needed Pickard’s help moving a piano and some heavy boxes at the missile silo.
Pickard waxed sarcastic. If Skinner was so helpless, why didn’t he get one of his flunkies to help?
Despite the chill he heard in Pickard’s voice, Nichols sensed a big fish on the line. The cagey back-and-forth between Skinner and Pickard about a swimming pool project was proof enough that Skinner hadn’t been lying.
The more he’d dug into Pickard’s past, the more Nichols became convinced that he’d finally stumbled upon the psychedelic Wizard of Oz. The DEA had a file on him dating back twenty-seven years. While he was extremely careful, Pickard’s big weakness seemed to be women. He’d recently left one to cohabitate with another, only to leave her for a third that he’d picked up during research in Russia. All three were at least twenty years younger than Pickard.
But it didn’t end there. Skinner claimed in his debriefing with Nichols that Pickard hit strip joints and gentlemen’s lounges everywhere he went. In San Francisco, he had his own harem. Four strippers in particular at the O’Farrell Club dithered with Leonard to a degree that made Nichols wonder whether they were angling for more than tips. Martina Schenevar, Deanna Luce, Athena Raphael, and Sita Kaylin looked like they did a lot more than dance and let Leonard buy them dinner. Nichols suspected they might be muling drug profits from the Golden Triangle to Los Angeles. Raphael’s LA boyfriend, he believed, was doing the laundering.
At the end of that initial phone call, Pickard agreed to a face-to-face. On the evening of Oct. 23, he met Skinner at a Sheraton in San Rafael. While Natasha waited in the bar downstairs, Skinner bitched about the $10,000 he had to pay for the minor infraction of impersonating an Interpol agent. Hidden video captured the entire uneasy reunion:
Skinner: “Did you see how much money it took me to get myself out of my little fucking bullshit thing?”
Pickard: “It was more than the money; it was that the risk to your life lived, and all your friends’ lives . . . With that kind of public exposure, and scrutiny. . . .”
Pickard was far more concerned with the future of the swimming pool project than he was Skinner’s $10,000 fine. Kansas was no longer acceptable. He’d sooner set up in Europe and do his laundry in Holland than remain in Wamego.
Skinner stopped whining and Pickard became more agreeable. He digressed, making small talk about Sasha’s newest designer drug. Street named “Foxy,”4 a ten-milligram dose boosted sex drive while delivering a three-to-six-hour trip.
Skinner had to agree: sounded like a fantastic way to fuck.
Then and there, Karl Nichols nicknamed Leonard the “Sex Maniac.” He continued taking notes while Pickard gave Skinner his cell number. They agreed to keep in touch.
On Oct. 27, DEA agents did a walk-through at Skinner’s silo. The only chemical Karl Nichols saw was an open can of ET5 sitting atop a stereo. Skinner neglected to say he’d relocated ten more to the metal barn (a.k.a. “the Lester building”) or that he’d hidden another three behind a deep freeze. He also failed to disclose that he’d carted the rest to Manhattan and put them in a closet in Emily’s bedroom.
Nichols didn’t seem to notice. He and his agents were too busy effusing over the 120 crates of lab equipment stacked five high along one side of the Lester building. Outside of his team, Operation White Rabbit was very hush-hush. Nichols liked to say that not even Attorney General Janet Reno was in the loop.
And yet Skinner and his minions had been hinting about super-secret doings down at the missile base for weeks. Most everyone in town knew something was up. When suits in Ray Bans began frequenting Toto’s Tacoz on Main Street, both the sheriff and Wamego police took note. The one person who never had a clue was Leonard Pickard.
When Leonard flew into Tulsa on Thursday, Nov. 2, his agenda topper was sending flowers to Trais: blooms for baby Duncan with all his love. Only then did he get down to business.
He and Apperson rented a car, then met Skinner at the top of the Adam’s Mark Hotel. He appeared nervous.
“I didn’t want to go up because I was concerned they had found out I was working for the government,” Skinner later testified in court.
Todd transformed fear into bravado. “I’m not afraid of the Mafia or the government,” he boasted to Pickard and Apperson. “I’m more powerful than you realize!”
Leonard rolled his eyes. He paid Skinner lip service then silently thanked providence he’d soon be in his rear view. The following morning, he and Clyde hit the road.
Skinner had driven ahead. As recorded by a microphone wired to his thigh, he kept up a
