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

didn’t know if he was going to call the police or something. Did you hear him whisper something in the back? He was probably telling the guy not to show me anything. But I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That’s why I told him I wasn’t there to buy, just to look.”

That Crichton would still be incensed about Gilkey’s stealing from him hadn’t occurred to him. He seemed happy that our trip to Brick Row had gone so well.

“He was kinda rude, but I guess kinda a gentleman, too. I was really surprised he remembered me. I’ve only met him like twice,” said Gilkey, referring to a visit to Crichton’s booth at the 2003 book fair in San Francisco and later, at Brick Row, when he tried to sell the Winnie-the-Pooh books. He hadn’t considered that the crime he’d committed against Crichton might have cemented those two meetings in Crichton’s memory.

“If it wasn’t for you there,” he added, “he probably would have called the police. Or harassed me . . . I did get a book from him, but that’s why I told him just now that I was just looking. I got Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, but he got it back.”

Well, then, no harm done.

“The second time I went in there, I asked him if I could take a look at some books,” said Gilkey, referring to the time he stopped by Crichton’s shop to try to sell the Winnie-the-Pooh books in an effort to raise money for an attorney. “I knew these books were valuable and I knew I could get a couple thousand dollars out of him . . . so I went to him, and he immediately offers five hundred. There’s no way. . . . They’re worth close to ten thousand. . . . So I knew immediately the police were talking to him, otherwise he would have offered more. That gave it away. He was onto me.”

What Gilkey failed to mention, but what I would later learn, was what happened when Crichton did not want to buy the Pooh books.¹

Gilkey had asked, “Since you’re not interested in these, is there something else you might want?”

“Yes,” said Crichton. “In fact, I’m looking for a first-edition Mayor of Casterbridge in brown morocco.” He was referring to the book Gilkey had stolen from him.

Gilkey, deadpan, didn’t flinch. “No,” he said. “I don’t have one of those.”

“Are you sure?” asked Crichton. “Because that is the one book I’m really looking for.”

“I’m sure,” said Gilkey, and he walked out.

“Those stories you told me back there,” I said, referring to Gilkey’s numerous claims that he’d been ripped off, “did you tell them for Crichton’s benefit?”

To my surprise, Gilkey admitted that he had. “What goes around comes around. I was just evening the score.”

The problem, as Gilkey saw it, was that he had evened the score too many times with too many dealers in the Bay Area. “I’m pretty much well known,” said Gilkey. “I probably won’t be able to go back in these stores, not in San Francisco. Probably L.A., New York. Just not San Francisco. I probably never can do this again. I mean, if I were to do crime like that, I never could do it again ’cause they know my method of operation. Even if somebody else does it, they’d think it was me.”

Never again. Never again. Gilkey seemed to be trying to convince himself as vigorously as he was trying to assure me. I started to pack up my things, but he was reluctant to end our conversation.

“There’s a book fair coming up in San Francisco,” he said, referring to the annual public library sale. I thought he might be suggesting I go, but I didn’t want to run into any dealers with him again. I suggested that instead we meet the following Wednesday. This time, I made sure the meeting would be at Goodwill.

10

Not Giving Up

I called Crichton and explained why I had accompanied Gilkey to his store. He was gracious and understanding and told me that he had decided not to make a scene or throw Gilkey out because he didn’t know who I was. As far as he knew, I had no idea Gilkey was a thief. Or maybe I wasn’t a journalist but a fellow con artist scouting for a swindle. Crichton had decided to play it safe.

When I met with Crichton in his shop the next week, it was with a mixture of impatience and bemusement that he relayed the story of how Gilkey had stolen from him. He had since become more assiduous about all orders, not that any diligence is foolproof. “I’ve had guys come in here with three-piece suits,” he said, “and the next thing you know they’re conning you. You always have to be ready for someone, but I tend to trust someone until I have reason not to.

“I’ve been in the business for twenty-five years. . . . The books have become more valuable, so they’re more vulnerable. Theft is very profitable. But I don’t dwell on these guys,” said Crichton. “Sanders dwells on them.”

Back at my desk, I e-mailed Sanders to let him know what had happened at Brick Row. I assumed that with his love of stories, his curiosity about Gilkey, and his persistent fascination with book thieves, he would appreciate the news. As awkward as the trip to Brick Row had been for me, I was glad I’d gone.

Several hours later, shortly before I went to sleep, I checked my e-mail. There was a message from Sanders. He had been my guide through the world of collecting, and I was eager to read his reaction.

In formal, even language, not the sort of writing I was accustomed to receiving from Sanders, he spelled out how enraged he was by my trip to Brick Row. Despite my having consulted him before going, which he seemed to have forgotten, his disgust was plain. He closed the e-mail with a chiding request: I don’t want to hear about your sick games ever again. It was a shutting down of communication. Sanders, the hero of this story, was turning out to be more intractable than Gilkey, the criminal. I lay awake much of the night, fearing that all my hard work had been for naught, that I had lost my story.

About a week after I received Sanders’s e-mail, Gilkey walked into Acorn Books on Polk Street, a large bookstore with a selection of rare titles, and was recognized by employee Andrew Clark. Clark had worked at Brick Row in 2003 and had taken the phone order for The Mayor of Casterbridge. He approached Gilkey.¹

“Please come this way,” he said, leading Gilkey to the front counter.

“What’s this about?” asked Gilkey.

Clark grabbed a camera from behind the counter. “You’re going to have to leave,” he said, “but first I’m going to take your picture.”

Gilkey didn’t budge, but instead looked into the camera. Click. “You can’t make me leave,” he said, agitated but not irate. He protested a little more, but eventually acquiesced. Whenever caught, he seems resigned to his fate, almost as though he has expected it.

Looking back, Gilkey considered the banishment absurd. “They don’t know what’s in my mind,” he told me later. “I was there to actually pay for a bibliography.” He thought that being ordered out of the store may have been a civil rights violation, and he intended to add that bookseller to the list of people he may sue.

In conceiving rationalizations, as with stealing books, Gilkey was unrelenting.

After a week or so, I called Sanders to hear his take on the Acorn Books incident and kept my fingers crossed, hoping he wouldn’t rip into me. He must have either forgotten his anger or decided to forgive me, because he was cordial. He told me about another recent theft, which did not, apparently, involve Gilkey. It was one more example of a book thief walking away unpunished.

The story went like this: The staff of Borderlands Books in San Francisco had caught a man trying to sell them some choice first-edition science fiction books—The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, and Out of Space and Time—which they recognized as having been recently stolen, along with ten others, from a science fiction bookseller in Portland, Oregon, named Bob Gavora. After consulting with Sanders, Gavora had spread the word to fellow science fiction booksellers about the theft, and Alan Beatts, owner of Borderlands Books, was one of