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

Moving on to more recent crimes, Sanders said that based on all the theft notices he had received from fellow dealers, he estimates that from the end of 1999 to the beginning of 2003, John Gilkey stole about $100,000 worth of books from dealers around the country. In the past decade, no other thief has been anywhere near that prolific. What was even more unusual, though, was that none of the items Gilkey stole later showed up for sale on the Internet or at any other public venue. It was this, combined with the inconsistency of Gilkey’s targeted titles (spanning a wide variety of genres and time periods) and the fact that some of the books he stole were not very valuable, that had Sanders convinced that he actually stole for love. Gilkey loved the books and wanted to own them. But Sanders couldn’t prove it.

Weeks earlier, when we had first spoken on the phone, Sanders had told me he was fairly certain that Gilkey had already served time at San Quentin State Prison and that he was now free. He shuddered at the thought, warning me that it would be difficult if not impossible to find Gilkey.

The day after that phone conversation, I looked into it. 19As Sanders had presumed, Gilkey had indeed done time at San Quentin and had been released. What Sanders did not know was that he was again behind bars, this time in a prison in Tracy, California. I wrote Gilkey a letter asking if he would talk to me. Knowing that he had denied his thefts in court, I didn’t expect him to open up to me about them. In the letter, I told him that I was interested in writing a story about people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to get rare books. It was a euphemism I hoped would keep him from feeling defensive.

While waiting for a reply, I ordered several books about book collecting and read a stack of articles. One of them, from The Age , an Australian newspaper, stuck with me because it indicated that book thievery was rampant. 20Why hadn’t I heard about this? Why hadn’t any of the friends I asked? The 2003 story was about how those in charge of the Secret Archives of the Vatican, an underground vault holding eighty-five kilometers of historical papers, illuminated manuscripts, antediluvian books, and rare correspondence, have to be on guard against thieves. This was intriguing enough, but there was one sentence in particular that caught my eye: an Interpol agent, Vivianna Padilla, revealed that according to the global police agency’s statistics, book theft is more widespread than fine art theft.

Something else caught my attention. It was an online reference to the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America’s profiles of five types of book thieves: the kleptomaniac who cannot keep himself from stealing; the thief who steals for profit; the thief who steals in anger; the casual thief; and the thief who steals for his own personal use. The ABAA had defined them, I suppose, to help dealers and librarians recognize and protect against the range of motivations that might drive a thief. Know thine enemy. Of all these, the one that interested me most was the thief who steals for his own personal use—one who steals out of a desire for books. How different would such a person be from the typical book collector? They all seem to be passionate and driven by want. A few dealers had already confided to me that in decades of working with rare books, they had been tempted more than once to steal a book, but had found the strength to resist it. At the book fair, I saw how easy it could be to walk away with something truly unique and wondrous (Flaubert’s own papers!). What makes someone cross the line from admirer to thief, and how fine is that line? I wanted to find out.

After several weeks of checking my mailbox, I found what I had been hoping for—an envelope stamped diagonally in large red letters: STATE PRISON GENERATED MAIL. Inside was a letter written in fine, small print on lined paper.

Yes, wrote Gilkey, I would be delighted to tell my story .

With the letter, he sent a page ripped from a Department of Corrections regulations handbook. He had drawn two stars next to the section titled “Media Access to Facilities” and written in the margin, It’s easy to get approved!

SITTING OUTSIDE SANDERS’S BOOTH at the New York fair, I watched him talk to customers, some of whom he knew well, others not at all. In either case, he was an accommodating host, taking pleasure in sharing his books with people who appreciated them. Again, I had the impression that the book fair was a kind of theater, and Sanders, a seasoned player. When his booth emptied for a minute, he sat down next to me again.

“Gilkey wrote to me from prison,” I decided to tell him, “and said he’s willing to speak with me.”

For a moment, Sanders didn’t respond. I had expected him to be excited about the news, eager to hear the details (this, after all, was his big quarry), but instead he looked stern, incredulous. Before saying anything, he gave me a sideways glance.

“You should ask him where all the books he stole are hidden,” he said, peevishly. “I bet he’s got a storage unit somewhere out in Modesto, where he’s from.” He stared at the floor a moment, then added, “He’s not going to tell you, of course.”

It had been over two years since Gilkey had stolen books from Sanders’s colleagues, but Sanders was obviously still stung by the experience. Unlike me, merely intrigued by the idea of Gilkey’s thefts, Sanders’s way of life had been violated by them. He had a legitimate grievance against Gilkey. It was time for me to go, but before I left his booth, Sanders needed to give me one more warning:

“I tell you,” he said, knowing I would soon meet with Gilkey, “all, and I mean all, book thieves are natural-born liars.”

2

Half-truths

When I returned to San Francisco, I found in my mailbox another envelope stamped STATE PRISON GENERATED MAIL. Inside, Gilkey had written more encouragement and information regarding visiting hours (weekends only), that his time in prison was soon to end (in July), and that it might be a good idea for you to call DVI [the prison] and set a date . I did.

Deuel Vocational Institution lies sixty-five miles east of San Francisco, in Tracy. On the late spring day I drove there, the sky was a dull blue, the wind fierce, and the hills well on their way to a dry shade of brown. Off the highway, the frontage road was bordered by Harley-Davidsons, powerboats, and off-road vehicles in various states of disrepair. I turned onto Casson Road, which led to the prison, a group of beige two-and three-story buildings surrounded by two layers of razor-wire fencing.

It was nine-fifteen in the morning and already hot. I told a uniformed woman behind the window at the Reception Center that I was there for my appointment. “We’ll call you when it’s your turn,” she grunted, adding that if I had any change, it would have to be in a plastic bag, and that I couldn’t bring any paper money inside. So before joining the people waiting in the lobby, I ran out to my car and locked my cash in the glove compartment.

I had never been inside a prison, but I’d heard stories from a friend who had conducted an interview in one. The women visiting, she explained, were dressed to the nines, usually in very low-cut, tight blouses, and the atmosphere thrummed with lust and danger.

Inside the DVI Reception Center, the atmosphere was more church social than sleazy bar. Parents, spouses, grandparents, and children, mostly Hispanic, sat and waited to hear their names called. Occasionally, one of them would drift over to the corner, where there was a gift shop with inmates’ crafts for sale. A painting of a terrified-looking wolf with yellow eyes hung on a wall above three identical wooden wishing well lamps for $24 each and a selection of clocks with pictures of Jesus or desert scenes lacquered to their faces.