But on the last day before they were to fly home, they returned to their hotel room to find that their electronic door lock didn’t work.
“It was fused shut,” said Malone. “Hampton Inn literally had to replace the entire door.”
The following morning, they paid one final visit to the silo. The gates were wide open. An unidentified man stood by a trailer inside the fence. He seemed to be waiting for them. The guy struck a neighborly pose. Malone thought he might have been one of Skinner’s employees. The man repeated meagre details reported in the Wamego Times, but had no idea where Skinner was. Of course, he could not let Malone in to retrieve his speakers.
Defeated, Malone headed for the airport. On the way, his cell phone rang.
“It was the top prosecutor in the state,” recalled Malone. “He says, ‘Hey! I heard you were in town.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’ He’s like, ‘We’d like to talk to you.’ I said, “I’m heading to the airport right now.’ He said, ‘How about tomorrow?’ I said, “I’ll be in Sacramento.’ He said, ‘Fine. We’ll be there.’”
The following day, Karl Nichols and his partner Roger Hanzlik showed up. Malone expected suits and ties; what he got were a couple of duffers who looked like they’d just finished a round at the municipal golf course.
In what would turn out to be the first of several conversations, Malone learned that Skinner was their Number One snitch—Nichols’s Rosetta Stone inside the acid conspiracy. He was a rare bird and had to be protected at all costs.
For all Malone cared, Todd could be the Drug War’s Second Coming. He wanted his speakers back. Skinner was a deadbeat, and from what Malone had been able to learn about him in Wamego, probably a killer to boot. Just ask Paul Hulebak’s family.
“I said, ‘You guys are protecting this clown and someday he’s going to kill somebody. And it may not be your kid and it may not be my kid, but it’s going to be somebody’s kid and it’s going to be your fault.’
“I was pissed. I actually had my finger in Karl’s chest I was so pissed. I said ‘You need to do something about this guy.’ And he goes, ‘What you need to do is stop playing private detective.’ And then I got really pissed. I said, ‘You get my goddamn speakers back and I’ll quit being private detective.’”
The DEA bullied most everyone during the first few weeks. Sasha Shulgin described agents as “very brutal” when they descended upon his Orinda home. Mark Kleiman professed consternation at his protégé’s secret life. Even Buddhists were detained for questioning.
“I was pretty upset when I heard of his drug activities,” recalled the Zen Center Abbess, Blanche Hartmann, who underwent interrogation like everyone else.
Based on the assumption that her mortgage may have been paid with drug money, Trais Kliphuis faced the prospect of losing her home. Natasha Pickard did lose hers.
Leonard contacted his new wife immediately after his arrest. He told her his bail was probably going to be set at $600,000. The only one who had that kind of money among the swimming-pool crowd was Stefan Wathne,2 whom he advised her to contact through John Halpern. Before she could do so, the government came calling.
“There were so many DEA that they couldn’t fit inside the apartment,” said Pickard. “They displaced everyone on to the street, including my father-in-law and Kusia,3 our Himalayan.”
The DEA tore the one-room apartment asunder, confiscating Leonard’s laptop and Natasha’s day planner, in which she’d written, “Leonard’s in trouble.”
“It was about a week after my daughter was born,” said Pickard. “Natasha sent me a photo. Newborn in arms, she sat crumpled in a corner. The door had literally been torn off its hinges.”
Some, like Deborah Harlow, reached out to the DEA preemptively. She volunteered the contents of a secret stash in Roseville. According to the National Self Storage registration, a Deborah Connor first rented the locker on April 11, 1997. When agents opened it, they found two boxes: one contained Melissa’s baby clothes; the other, $170,1004 in $10s, $20s and $100s. For cooperating, the DEA allowed her to keep $20,000.
With limited phone access, Leonard did his best to sound the alarm: “I tried ringing Halpern, as a gesture to a friend, but he hung up. At the time, I thought he was just nervous.”
Leonard arranged to have keys sent to Mike Bauer that would unlock two Planet Self Storage lockers near Boston, similar to the one in Roseville where Deborah Connor kept nappies and cash. There were other storage units in New Mexico, California, and Massachusetts too, all eventually looted by the government.
From Santa Fe to Harvard Yard, psychonauts panicked. Alfred Savinelli spoke to Skinner shortly after the bust. Ignorant of Todd’s role as “Cooperating Witness No. 1,” Alfred offered to help Natasha come to Kansas for the bail hearing. Alfred warned Todd to no longer call direct. No telling who might be listening. If he needed to get in touch, Skinner was to have a woman call Native Scents, place an order for “sweet grass,” and leave a safe number.
Savinelli confided to Todd that he thought Halpern might be the weak link. The risk of losing his medical license might have turned the Harvard psychiatrist. One thing seemed certain: if Leonard made bail, he would surely skip the country.
Skinner also called another friend. On the DEA tape, it sounded like an absurdist game of kindergarten gossip. The friend told Todd that Natasha told Savinelli, who then told Ganga White, who next told the friend that Skinner had been responsible for the bust.
Nonsense, said Todd. He’d been sitting in a Topeka restaurant when the raid went down. He didn’t learn about it until one of his employees informed him. Gunnar Guinan heard the drama unfold over a police scanner.
His friend sighed that he’d always figured it was just a matter of time before Pickard fell. Now that it had happened, he
