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

part.”

Of course.

Gilkey said that after police raided his Treasure Island apartment, they returned to him several items they could not prove were stolen, including the Brahms postcard he had taken from Roger Gross. In his mind, this justified his contention that the items were not stolen.

“They gave it back to me,” he said. “So what am I supposed to think?”

I was contemplating the convoluted logic of Gilkey’s defense, when a recording interrupted our conversation: This call may be recorded or monitored.

When I told him I might visit him in prison, he was more than welcoming.

“Do I need to sign anything?” he asked.

I had decided to be more frank about my views of his stealing. I told him that I had spoken with dealers whose books he’d stolen, and that some said they hadn’t had insurance, so they suffered the losses themselves.

“Well, if I were a better person . . . but I’m in jail right now, of course,” he said, acknowledging that he might not be that better person. “I’d say that’s the nature of the business. That’s how I feel now. As a business owner I certainly wouldn’t want to lose five hundred dollars. But if you open up a business, things like that are going to happen. ’Cause, like, a liquor store, it’s probably gonna get robbed once a month. So if you want to open up a business, you gotta be prepared for stuff like that.”

Stuff like that happens. That he made it happen was irrelevant to Gilkey. As he stated his views, his voice sounded the way it did when he told me about thefts he’d pulled off successfully. He spoke in short, staccato sentences, brimming with braggadocio, like a gangster in a 1940s movie. I couldn’t help thinking that he was not connecting the dots, that he was not able to see how his criminal actions had put him where he stood, with a pay phone at his ear, guards at his back. I suppose I wanted him to make that connection. I asked him if he could imagine a life without books.

“Yeah, I can,” he said. “I mean, I can’t collect books unless people donate them to me.”

Clearly, he considered actually buying them out of the question.

“Eventually,” he admitted, “I think I should try to get another rare book. At this point I don’t know how I would do it.”

As robust as his powers of imagination may have been, he seemed incapable of considering a future devoid of rare books. Neither, it would seem, could he stop thinking of devious ways of getting them.

“To be honest,” he said, “I did think of a criminal idea to get them. But I don’t think it’s feasible.” He elaborated, “I was thinking something like insurance fraud,” adding, as if in justification of his confession, “I am just being honest.”

He continued, in spite of the frequent Big Brother-like reminder that the call might be monitored, revealing shifting impulses of dream, doubt, caution, and pride: “Insurance fraud to get all one hundred books [from the Modern Library’s list] at one time. And that may or may not work. I probably won’t do it. I mean, I did think of the idea.”

I asked Gilkey if he thought what he had done was right or wrong.

“In terms of a percentage basis,” he said, “it’s not like I’m one hundred percent wrong. I’d say it’s more like sixty percent wrong and forty percent right. I mean, sure, that’s their business, book dealers, but they should make books more accessible to people that like them.”

Seeming to anticipate my reaction to this, he added, “That’s the kind of warped thinking I have.” But just as quickly, he returned to his self-centered logic. “I mean, how am I supposed to build my collection unless I’m, like, this multimillionaire?”

Gilkey had a wish that he could not afford to grant himself, thus those who kept him from doing so, dealers, were to blame. What must it be like, I wondered, to view the world in such a way, to feel entitled to all one desired and to be able to justify to oneself any means of obtaining it? If this were truly how Gilkey perceived the world, and every conversation with him confirmed this feeling (I could not think of any reason for him to have presented these views to me as any sort of disguise; after all, they were not flattering), then perhaps he was mentally ill. He was aware that stealing books was illegal, and yet he continued to steal them, because he did not equate illegal with wrong. Was this a permanent state of mind, or could he change? He didn’t seem to want to. Instead, he kept his mind on his collection, imagining how it would elevate his position in society. Gilkey would be regarded as a man of culture and erudition, just like the woman in the wealth management advertisement I had seen who was pictured leaving a rare book shop. Everywhere he looked—movies, television, books, advertisements, clothing catalogs—were images that confirmed our culture’s reverence not for literature, per se, but for an accumulation of books as a sign that you belonged among gentility. Through his collection, Gilkey would occupy a revered place in an envied world. Maybe he was just a little more mad than the rest of them.

The recorded message interrupted again. This call may be recorded or monitored.

I asked Gilkey why he had left so many books out in the open in his apartment in Treasure Island, and he chuckled.

“Yeah . . . I was so stupid, I didn’t pack them away and I left them in the bookcase. Cost me fifty thousand bucks in books. . . . I didn’t think they would come and look.”

Gilkey’s honesty emboldened me. I asked him where the rest of the books were.

Apparently forgetting he had told me he didn’t own any books anymore, he said, “They’re stored away. They [the police] took a lot of them . . . but I’ve still got some.”

I asked if they were with his family, or perhaps in a storage facility.

Gilkey thought a moment. “Um . . . I’ve got them actually at an auction house, on hold. I keep changing venues. Keep thinking I’m going to sell them when all this boils over. I kinda pretend I’m gonna auction [them] off.”

Gilkey said he had only a few minutes left to talk. He had told me that in 1994, he bought Lolita and The Return of Sherlock Holmes “on my own credit card.”

I felt the pressure of time running out, so I challenged him again, reminding him that he said he didn’t like to spend any of his own money.

“This is the thing,” he said. “On the American Express card, they have a supplemental purchase plan. So I bought like fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of items, and I only had to pay three hundred a month.”

I was about to express my doubts about his willingness to make payments, when he rushed forward and confessed.

“I had another little plan behind that, so I essentially did get them free.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well,” he said sheepishly, “I told them I lost my American Express card, and that there were unauthorized charges on it.”

In less than five minutes, Gilkey told me that he had bought a couple of rare books, that he had paid for them in monthly installments—and then that he had not paid a dime. Instead, he had claimed to American Express that the charges were not his.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess they really want me off the phone now.” We said good-bye.

I hung up and wondered if anyone else knew about his American Express scam. The credit card company? The police? Why did he tell me? Why wasn’t he afraid I would notify anyone? Should I? Was I obligated to, legally? I was pleased he had given me this information, but I didn’t want to be in the position of turning him in. I put off making any decisions until I could find out what my obligations were, even though I knew that what bothered me was a matter not only of legal duty but of ethical responsibility. Did I need to tell dealers? Would it do any good, since I had no idea where the books were? I decided it was best to talk to a lawyer before making any decisions.