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

“You’d tell me,” said the FBI agent, “if the book thief had stolen anything, right?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, trying to sound convincing, “Of course.”

As soon as I got off the phone, I dug through my notes. When had Gilkey stolen the set? I couldn’t remember. And when had he told me? Had I waited too long to notify the police? Or now the FBI? Frantically, I flipped through thick binders of transcripts.

I dug and dug, and eventually I found it.

Gilkey had stolen the books in May of 2001, and had first informed me in September 2006, a little over five years after the fact. I was clear. But I was also stuck on the fact that Gilkey had told me of the theft just four months after the period of time in which he could have been prosecuted for it ended, even though we had been meeting for almost two years. Was he shrewd or, once again, just plain lucky?

14

The Devil’s Walk

During a trip to New York, I visited the Morgan Library and Museum. I had read about J. P. Morgan’s private collection and wanted to see it up close. I was also eager to see a new exhibit, Federico da Montefeltro and His Library . Formed in the fifteenth century, his was the richest Italian Renaissance library to be owned by a single private collector. 1It usually resides in the Vatican, but several prized pieces from the collection were on loan to the Morgan. Montefeltro, the illegitimate son of a count, had soldiered and studied his way to the lofty position of duke. Judging from what I saw and read, he probably cherished his books, but without doubt he loved displaying them for others. He had housed the library near the entrance of his palace in Urbino, allowing his books to be admired by many, even if only a few had the privilege of actually reading them. He was also in the habit of showing off his two-volume Bible, which according to one scholar served to “proclaim his identity as a Christian humanist prince.” 2Mere ownership as evidence of identity—Gilkey would, no doubt, agree. The exhibit was on display in a small gallery where the walls were hung with fine portraits, and where glass cases held six-hundred-year-old manuscripts and illuminations, but I found the most intriguing pieces to be the large digital reproductions of several wood panels the duke had ordered for his studiolo . Made of intricate inlay, these wooden trompe l’oeils were realistic depictions of cabinets with shelves full of books and musical and scientific objects: an astrolabe, a mechanical clock, an organ, a clavichord. Each was symbolic individually, and collectively they formed a tableau of the duke’s erudition and culture. While Montefeltro was an impressive man of means and power and Gilkey is not, standing in that small gallery, I couldn’t help wondering if either of them would have collected books if they hadn’t had an audience to appreciate them—or in Gilkey’s case, dreams of a future audience. In this and many other respects, I came to understand that Gilkey is typical of many book collectors. It is his crimes and his unwavering, narcissistic justification of them that sets him apart.

Gilkey had spent that summer in prison for violating parole (police finally caught up with him at his mother’s house), and in the fall of 2007, when he got out, we met a few more times. I wanted to ask him a question that had dogged me for months, a simple one to determine how knowledgeable and calculating, versus just plain lucky, he had been during his most active spree: Had he known that by stealing from different states, different counties, different police jurisdictions, he had made it more difficult for the court to convict him?

“It did?” he asked, puzzled. He considered the fact for a moment. “Oh yes, I did know.”

He was a lucky man.

When I asked if he’d been aware of the FBI’s five-year limit on pursuing stolen books, which meant that the crimes he committed could no longer be prosecuted, he was equally surprised.

Gilkey was lucky for yet another reason, although it took me some time to see it. As much as his passion wreaked havoc in his life, it gave shape and purpose to it. Often, when I told people his story, they would say, How sad . Here was a man who seemingly could not help himself from the very act that would put him in prison. I came to disagree. Such single-minded wanting is a lot like never-satisfied lust, a dream that won’t die, and working toward achieving it can give tremendous pleasure. While Gilkey had told me he was depressed in prison and said he would never want to go back, I began to see his “frequent flyer” status (as one prison official referred to it) as perhaps he saw it: the price he had to pay. Some pay for their success with soaring blood pressure or dissolved marriages. He paid with jail time. To me, Gilkey had come to seem a happy man with goals, ambition, and some measure of success. His only sacrifice was a series of forced pauses on the way to realizing his dream.

One of the last times we met, as if feeling the urgency of time running out, Gilkey offered another idea for his future.

“I could have a T-shirt made that says, ‘Will Work for Rare Books,’ ” he said. “There could be a picture of me wearing it over a suit. That might be good to include in your book.”

That was not all.

“I had a couple notes here. I was thinking maybe at the end of the book . . . and I think it’s a perfect ending, if the people who read it want to donate a book to me to keep me out of jail or something. I was thinking of something cheesy like that.”

And then, “What do you think about bobble heads? Of famous writers? I’ve been doing research on copyright, and I thought maybe a limited edition of, like, a thousand bobble heads. I’d sell the books with them.”

He was also hoping to visit ghost towns in New Mexico with a video camera and a metal detector. “I’d talk about the history a little and then try to search for treasure,” he said. He would record his experiences and broadcast them on the Internet.

He was thinking about publishing books with expired copyrights now in the public domain. He speculated that Booth Tarkington’s Magnificent Ambersons might be such a book, and if so, he’d print five hundred and sell a bobble head of Tarkington with every copy.

“I got another idea. I’m working on it. I’m gonna get a database of rare book collectors, and I’m just gonna ask them if I could have a book. It wouldn’t hurt to ask. I mean, I’m trying not to do anything illegal.”

“You can’t stop, can you?” I asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“I just like to collect books, collect stuff. Actually, I was gonna tell you about a new plan that I have, but I guess I better not. I’ll tell you later. I don’t want to do anything criminal, ’cause I don’t want to go back to prison. But somehow, if I can get my books for free, it would be better.”

The next time we met, when I was almost accustomed to Gilkey’s eagerness to contribute to his own story, he surprised me. Speculating that maybe there wasn’t enough action in the book I was writing, he looked at me with a quizzical expression and asked, “So, do you think I should get all one hundred books now?”

“I’m not going to answer that question,” I said, stunned. He had begun orchestrating his life with an eye to how it might appear on the printed page, but I was still trying to cling to the notion that I was recording a story that was progressing without my influence. I was not going to become its director.

Gilkey elaborated on his reasoning.