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

“So, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

The week before, he had agreed to let me tag along with him on one of his scouting trips, to learn how he selects books. I had suggested going to Goodwill, a frequent haunt of his now that he was persona non grata in most San Francisco rare book shops. Gilkey, though, wanted to take me to Brick Row, from which he stole The Mayor of Casterbridge . I tried to mask my disbelief and hoped he would think of another place.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Wouldn’t Goodwill work? Or, if not that, aren’t there any other stores you can think of?”

Probably sensing my unease, he hesitated. “Maybe they’ll recognize me,” he said, but then he reconsidered. “On second thought, it won’t be a problem.”

At home, I e-mailed Sanders for his opinion: Would the owner, John Crichton, whom I had not yet met, be upset or angry that I’d knowingly accompanied a rare book thief into his store? I didn’t relish dealing with the wrath of one of Gilkey’s victims, however peripherally.

“Crichton’s a good guy,” Sanders assured me and gave me the impression that, as Gilkey had said, it wouldn’t be a problem.

I was still wary, but too curious to walk away from an opportunity to see Gilkey in his element. What sort of person returns to the scene of his crime? So far, I had come to know Gilkey only through our private conversations. I still had no idea how he behaved out in the world, especially his idealized rare book world. He shared many characteristics of other collectors, but his thieving set him apart in ways that still confounded me: Was he amoral or mentally ill? How are such lines drawn, anyway? Accompanying Gilkey to Brick Row was an irresistible chance to be an eyewitness. Also, I had heard that the shop was well regarded among rare book collectors, and I wanted to see it firsthand. I had arranged to write a story about Gilkey and Sanders for San Francisco Magazine , so with the assignment in hand, I headed off to observe Gilkey as I had never seen him before.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of Brick Row, Gilkey said he would show me what he typically looks for and how he goes about it.

He did not appear to be apprehensive. I, on the other hand, was all nerves. I had no idea what Crichton might do when we walked in. This, at the very least, was going to be awkward.

We took the elevator to the second floor. The sign outside the elevator indicated that Brick Row Books was to the left, down the hall, but Gilkey headed to the right. I pointed to the sign, and he said that they must have moved. Later he noted with some satisfaction that Brick Row must not be doing very well these days because their old location, at the other end of the hall, was bigger.

We passed the rare book shop of John Windle, who had been helpful months earlier when I consulted him about the seventeenth-century German botanical text, the book that had captured my curiosity and led me to Gilkey and Sanders. I was sure Windle would recognize me and, I feared, also Gilkey as we passed his shop, so I turned and looked the other way so that I wouldn’t have to explain myself.

These are small, quiet shops, places where one customer is the norm, two is busy, and three feels bustling. Gilkey and I arrived at the door to Brick Row almost immediately. We walked in and faced two men, John Crichton, the owner, standing near the rear, and an employee sitting at a desk near the entrance. Did they recognize Gilkey? Would they call the police?

I wondered how Gilkey would react if they did. During a prior meeting, when I had asked him what he was up to, expecting to hear about books he was reading, or the research he was always doing, or his almost daily visits to the library, he reported a new problem.

“I just gotta be careful about what I say ’cause a couple of the book dealers are doing repeat complaints, tryin’ to get me in trouble.”

According to Gilkey, at his weekly parole meeting, his probation officer told him that an autograph dealer in New York named Roger Gross had alerted the police about a postcard he had spotted for sale on eBay. (In fact, Sanders had spotted it.) The postcard was signed by nineteenth-century composer Johannes Brahms, and Gilkey had stolen it from Gross a few years earlier (but the police, not having proof—since Gross hadn’t yet reported it missing—had returned it to Gilkey after the Treasure Island raid).

The week before his probation meeting, Gilkey had sold the Brahms postcard to a Colorado autograph dealer, Tod Mueller, but felt exempt from culpability. “I guess the guy [Roger Gross] was already reimbursed for the loss and he wanted his property back,” Gilkey said to me, shaking his head in disbelief. In a bizarre, but what I was beginning to grasp as typical, distancing of himself from his crimes, he said, “Now, to me, I wasn’t even involved. Gross wanted it from the guy who purchased it from me. Somehow my name came up.”

Somehow? Once Gilkey had rid himself of the postcard, he felt that he should also be rid of all blame.

Inside Brick Row, natural light streamed through the windows, illuminating books sitting in cases along every wall and under windows, and on a graceful arc of shelves that ran through the middle of the shop. It was a quiet refuge from the city streets below, and if you ignored the computer and phone on Crichton’s heavy oak desk, it could be a nineteenth-century bookshop. Thousands of majestic leather-bound books, many with gold lettering, caught the light as I walked by. Given Gilkey’s Victorian library fantasies, I could see why he favored this shop, why he chose to bring me there. Unlike Sanders’s shop in Salt Lake City, Brick Row was tidy and appeared highly ordered. I got the sense that only serious collectors would venture inside, in contrast to Sanders’s shop, where collectors mingled with people in search of a good used paperback (he offered a selection at the back of the store). The doors of the locked bookcases on the right-hand wall near the entrance had metal screens in a crosshatch pattern that made deciphering titles a challenge. These cases contained some of Crichton’s more valuable books. A film-maker would do well to use Brick Row as a set for a gentleman’s fine library. “More classier feel than some of the other bookstores that just rack them up in average bookcases,” is how Gilkey had described it.

Crichton spoke from behind his desk. “May I help you?” His question seemed to ask much more. He was looking hard at Gilkey.

“I’m not here to buy anything,” said Gilkey congenially, “just to look around, if that’s okay. We’re just here to look.”

No answer.

Crichton stood facing us. He was in his fifties, with white hair, a ruddy complexion, and clear blue eyes. He had an assured air and seemed to be the kind of person who rarely had the wool pulled over his eyes.

Gilkey referred to his list of the Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels,” and explained to me how he often looks for books on it. He pointed to the name Nathaniel Hawthorne.

“Do you have any Hawthorne?” Gilkey asked Crichton.

Crichton answered curtly, “No.”

“I know he has one,” Gilkey whispered to me.

His comment was a hint at his antagonism toward dealers, which he had made plain in our prior meetings. He’d argued that there was, in fact, widespread fraud among rare book sellers, fraud that made him not only blameless but also a victim.

One example Gilkey had cited was rebinding. Dealers, he explained, would remove the cover and title page from a second or later edition of a book, and then rebind it with a title page from a first edition that was in poor condition.

“They make it look like a first edition, first printing,” he said. “That’s part of the fraud they do. That’s actually legal.”