Allison Bartlett - The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

“Oh, really?” said Lopez.

“Hawkins” then gave the correct billing address.

“I’m going to run this order through again,” said Lopez. “So why don’t you call back in a few minutes.”

Lopez quickly Googled the shipping address “Hawkins” had given him. It was the Sheraton Hotel in Palo Alto, just down the street from the Westin. (Gilkey was planning to pick up both books on the same day.) Lopez called American Express, who contacted the cardholder, Heather Hawkins, in New York, and asked if she had ordered a rare book. She had no idea what they were talking about.

When “Hawkins” called back to make sure the order had gone through, Lopez’s partner asked him to hold a moment while Lopez completed a call on another line. The man on the other line was Ken Sanders, whom Lopez had just alerted to what was going on. When Sanders heard the details, he suggested that Lopez string “Hawkins” along, complete the order, and agree to send the book by overnight delivery. After hanging up, Lopez picked up the other line, where “Hawkins” was waiting, and confirmed that the order was ready to go.

While Gilkey was pleased that he’d “nailed it,” Sanders wasted no time. He contacted San Jose police detective Ken Munson, whom Kevin Johnson, the Baltimore dealer, had spoken with when he filed a complaint about On the Road having been stolen. Sanders reminded Munson of that theft and the string of other thefts he suspected were committed by this man “Hawkins” with whom Lopez had just spoken. The “trilogy of Kens,” as Sanders calls himself, Lopez, and Munson, got to work.

Detective Munson is a reader of detective novels, Michael Connelly’s especially. 7He’s an inquisitive man, often bored by the usual Internet fraud cases he pursues, and was intrigued by this guy stealing books. It wasn’t the kind of case he usually took on, especially since the victim was a citizen of Massachusetts, not San Jose; but his high-tech unit, which dealt mostly with fraud, was fairly autonomous. And it was true that the hotel was in his jurisdiction.

Once Munson got Sanders’s message, he had to work fast: the book—a facsimile library edition Lopez had sent, in case the sting was not successful—was to be delivered the next morning. Munson thought this thief seemed pretty sharp. The dealers and credit card holders he had ripped off wouldn’t know of the fraud until a month or two afterward, when the bills arrived. And once notified, when they looked back over their records, all the dealers would find was a phone number, which would turn out to be a pay phone, and an address, which would turn out to be a hotel. Plus, this thief had been hitting different geographic areas, different jurisdictions. Even if the police could get a warrant on somebody in another state, the DA was not going to spend a thousand dollars to have him extradited, or pay his airfare. Munson had come across criminals who know that if they steal a small enough amount from a large enough group of people from different states, they may never be touched. He figured Gilkey was one of them. Munson agreed with Sanders and Lopez that whoever had stolen from Kevin Johnson was probably the same thief who had just called Lopez. Worst case, he thought, they’d spend five hours on it, and call it off if the thief didn’t show.

Munson contacted the Sheraton and found that there was a reservation for Heather and Heath Hawkins, which Gilkey had made shortly before he asked the hotel to hold all his packages. The hotel sits near Stanford University and appears to suffer from a split personality: Spanish-style architecture (stucco arches, red-tiled roofs) on the outside, pan-Asian details (Chinese lions, lacquered screens) on the inside. Also inside now were two undercover detectives, a woman and a man, seated comfortably in jeans and polo shirts, looking like a couple on vacation. They had arrived early, to be sure to be there for the FedEx delivery, which was guaranteed by ten thirty. They assumed the thief would try to arrive soon after the delivery. Outside, Munson had set up surveillance with unmarked cars in the parking lot. Inside, hotel employees had been alerted to give a signal when “Hawkins” came up to the desk and asked for his package. Of course, none of them really had any idea who or what they were looking for. The thief could be a man, a woman, two men—they didn’t know.

While Munson waited, Sanders tried to organize his colleagues. In order to convict Gilkey, he e-mailed them, they needed to send any information about recent thefts that matched Gilkey’s MO as soon as possible.

The responses poured in, but not all were helpful. 8A dealer from New York wrote that she had been approached twice by a man who said that he was buying books for the child of his girlfriend, but because she had found that the shipping addresses had not matched the billing addresses, she had not put the orders through.

Sanders wrote back: I need details. If he approaches you again, please play along and agree to send the book. Right this minute a motel in California is being staked out by police and he’s expecting The Grapes of Wrath in the morning. If all goes well, he’ll be in jail this time tomorrow. Confidential . . . if we don’t get him, we need to run another sting operation.

Later that day, Peter Howard, of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, wrote to Sanders about having lost two books in 2000 to a man who had sent his elderly “uncle” in to pick them up.

Then Erik Heldfond of Heldfond Book Gallery, where Gilkey had stolen two books in 2001, wrote to Sanders that his wife, Lane, had been in the store that day. At the time, she believed she was handing the books to the caller’s cousin. It might be helpful for her to see a photo of guy in custody, as she has a sharp eye and longgggg memory, he wrote. She estimated that he was in his late 20s, early 30s, 5’9”, brown hair, medium build, clean shaven, GAP type attire. She noted that he didn’t speak normally, saying he’d just come from the dentist.

Ed Smith, of Washington, reminded Sanders that he had lost a Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, near fine in dust jacket, real clean copy and a 1/99 ltd. ed. book by Samuel Beckett titled No Knife bound in leather and with a glassine wrapper in a box (fine condition, as new). Of the sting, he wrote: Great news . . . mums still the word, right?

Shortly after, Sanders sent an e-mail to the trade, summarizing what they had learned so far and asking dealers who had been victims if they thought they might be able to identify the thief in a photo lineup.

Gilkey spent the night in the Windham Hotel in San Francisco. The next morning, he emptied his pockets of anything that might identify him, taking only his hotel room key, a phone card, a couple of credit card receipts, and $20 to use for lunch. At around eleven A.M., he boarded the Caltrain for the hourlong ride. Out the window he watched graffiti-smothered industrial buildings speed by, then the back sides of down-and-out neighborhoods, and eventually the palm trees and foreign-car dealerships on the edge of Palo Alto. There, he got off the train and walked two short blocks to the Sheraton.

Strolling through the parking lot, Gilkey noticed the FedEx truck outside. If the book had not yet been delivered, it would be momentarily. As he approached the front desk, he thought he heard a click and people talking, the way they do on a police radio, but decided it was nothing and ignored it. He was just a few feet away from getting The Grapes of Wrath .

When Gilkey asked for his package, the hotel clerk went to a back area where they kept the mail. Seconds later, the undercover agents handcuffed him, announcing he was under arrest. They radioed Munson, who was waiting in the parking lot.