The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Ob

another I know this, that my books know me and love me. When of a morning I awaken I cast my eyes about my room to see how fare my beloved treasures, and as I cry cheerily to them, ‘Good-day to you, sweet friends!’ how lovingly they beam upon me, and how glad they are that my repose has been unbroken.”⁵

AT SAKS, Gilkey was in a world of tasteful luxury. He had been assigned to work in the Men’s Store on the first floor, in “men’s furnishings,” where meticulously folded garments of fine cottons, silks, and wools sat in floor- to-ceiling glass-fronted wood cabinetry. He would start his day checking the floor, clearing away any detritus left by the previous day’s shoppers. He would stroll past hand-stitched Borrelli shirts (starting around $350) and Etro ties ($130 and up), and chat with fellow workers. Because it was the holidays, when Saks customers can’t seem to get enough luxury goods, the floor was usually packed. They needed extra help, “floaters,” to work in various departments, which is why Gilkey was hired. He enjoyed the job and took special pleasure in spying local socialites and celebrities, such as Ann Getty and Sharon Stone, who was then married to San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein. Gilkey prided himself on being a good employee, always on time. He was friendly and thought that everyone at Saks, “especially the people in the loss prevention department,” were nice to him. He had snowed even the watchdogs, and I could imagine how. His decorous way of speaking, deferential affect, and calm demeanor would be valuable assets on the sales floor, where big spenders would be accustomed to being treated with such regard.

In addition to consulting Gilkey about their purchases, customers sometimes asked to open instant credit accounts. He would dutifully take down their information—names, numbers, addresses, and so on—and when they would tell him that they needed higher credit limits, he would call the business office and communicate their requests. When the office checked a customer’s credit rating and decided to grant a more generous limit, increasing it from, say, $4,000 to $8,000, Gilkey noticed.

This was a part-time job, only two or three days a week, but even if Gilkey had been working full-time, his salary would never have afforded him what he wanted. One day, while he was opening a new account for a customer, he realized what he held in his hands. A gold mine, he thought. Whenever he opened the instant accounts, he could put the audit copy in his pocket, go out to lunch, and write the information on a separate piece of paper, which he could refer to later when placing orders over the phone. That day at lunch, he did just that. He walked down the street to the Westin Hotel, took the elevator to the second-floor lobby, which offered some degree of privacy, and wrote down the credit card numbers listed on the instant account. The next day, he did it again. So it went, through the holidays. He was careful not to take every account record, however, hoping to avoid raising suspicions.

It was not long before Gilkey realized that he had yet another source for credit card information. In those days, customers’ entire credit card numbers were printed on receipts. Each receipt included a copy for the customer and a copy for the auditing department at Saks. Salespeople were asked to cross out the number on the customers’ copies, but the audit copies remained fully intact. According to Gilkey, when salespeople were rushed, they sometimes threw away copies, so even if, from time to time, he were to forget to turn one in, it would not be noticed.

Gilkey didn’t use the information to buy anything right away. He needed to wait enough time so that customers notified of fraudulent activity wouldn’t trace the last use of their cards back to Saks. He would save the account numbers for a rainy day. Holding off spending, he harvested five to ten receipts a week.

5

Spider-Man

Ken Sanders Rare Books is located on the edge of downtown Salt Lake City in a four- thousand-square-foot former tire shop endowed with high ceilings and abundant sunlight. The store is chockablock with so much old, beautiful, and bizarre printed matter—books, photographs, broadsides, postcards, pamphlets, maps—that a quick in-and-out trip takes more willpower than the average book lover can summon. The first time I visited, Sanders, dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, showed me around.

Standing near the entrance, he gestured toward a room to the left, where he keeps the rarest of his books. Although he is not religious, many of these are Mormon texts. This is Utah, after all, where demand for such books is high, and as he reminded me, he needs to make a living. Next, he directed my attention to the glass case separating the rare book room from those who might be inclined to tuck a nice little volume into the waistband of their pants (a common hiding place for book thieves). Inside the case were several books he loves: first editions of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, and Kerouac, in a display Sanders had set up the week before for the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ginsberg’s Howl.

Sanders led me to the main part of the store. In addition to more than a hundred thousand books and other materials (“If it’s printed, it’s here”), there are busts of Mark Twain and Demosthenes, cardboard cutouts of R. Crumb characters, and headless mannequins modeling T-shirts printed with characters from Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. The store reflects much of what Sanders cares about—books by Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, and B. Traven; music from the sixties; radical politics; the environment; and beautiful graphics. But of all that he cares about, it’s clear that his children are at the top of the list. Sometimes, Sanders’s daughter, Melissa, who used to work in the store, visits from California and lends a hand. When Melissa and her brother, Michael, were young, Sanders’s marriage fell apart and he took over their rearing himself.

“To have that kind of anchor . . . They probably saved my own sanity at certain points in my life,” he said. “It’s not easy for any single parent to raise children, whether it’s a mom or dad, it’s just more unusual for it to be the father. I have no regrets. I probably raised them like wild wolves, but I did the best I could. Melissa still remembers the summer I dragged them through Death Valley when it was a hundred and thirty-seven degrees. I made them get out of the car and walk in the sand dunes. ‘Dad tried to kill my brother and me,’ she says.”

Sanders will tell me this story several times, always with a proud and mischievous grin.

Next to the counter sat a gathering of armchairs and a few red plastic glasses left over from the evening before. At about five P.M. every day, Sanders offers wine, bourbon, and beer from a small fridge next to the counter to friends who drop by. One of those friends, “Captain Eddie,” digital artist Edward Bateman, told me that the bookstore is the nexus of Salt Lake City’s counterculture. I could see why. Sanders’s store has the appeal of an eccentric great-aunt’s attic, where in every corner you might just happen upon treasure. Add to that his raconteur’s charm, and it’s no wonder the store is a favored gathering spot. With the hum of slow-moving fans in the background, writers, authors, artists, and filmmakers sip and reminisce about recent readings in the store, the best of them raucous literary happenings, while Sanders starts planning the next one. Around them, the R. Crumb characters, the busts, and the faces of the Monkey Wrench Gang seem like ghostly participants in the conversation. On the wall behind the counter hangs a large portrait of Sanders that a friend of his painted. “I call it my Dorian Gray,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to get those Disney eyes for it—to watch the store.”

The store could use them. Before my visit, during our first phone conversation, Sanders had mentioned the Red Jaguar Guy, and during the tour, when I asked for details, he gave me a look that said, Are you ready for this? I had already heard enough of Sanders’s stories to know that I’d opened the door to a good one, and nothing seems to make him happier than finding a willing ear for his tales.

“It’s actually an embarrassing story. For six years I’ve been leading the charge against theft—how booksellers can protect themselves from credit card fraud—and this punk-ass kid in his twenties gets me. ‘Ryan’ comes into the store and tells me that he and his father are selling books online and being real successful at it. Over the next week or so he buys some copies of the Book of Mormon, some other books. Makes three purchases totaling five thousand five hundred dollars, and each time the credit card company approved the charge. Then I get a call from another Salt Lake City bookseller who complained to me that he had just received a chargeback for a Book of Mormon sale a month back. I was curious and walked over to his shop. The individual he described to me matched the description of Ryan. I began to get a sinking feeling. I called other shops and found that Ryan had been to at least two of them. So I called the credit card company, and they did nothing, those swine. I began alerting every book dealer from Provo to Logan and