The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (15 page)

Being forced to leave made Gilkey feel once again that the world had been unfair to him, singled him out. With his stockpile of receipts, though, he had the means to get even. Just thinking about it brightened his mood.

A couple of weeks later, on Tuesday, January 28, 2003, Gilkey woke at his mother’s house and got dressed. He skipped breakfast, took the bus to downtown Modesto, wandered around a little, then went to the Doubletree Hotel, where he settled into a comfortable chair next to the phones in a spacious alcove off the lobby. Gilkey was scrupulous about keeping records, of both books he desired and books he stole, noting which credit cards he had used and the circumstances of each swindle. One of his rules was not to place more than two or three orders in one day, but since not all his attempts would necessarily be fruitful, that morning’s list included seven or eight places to call. In addition to books, Gilkey had his heart set on a few antique documents and an antique sterling silver baby rattle he had seen in a catalog. He reached a dealer in Idaho and successfully ordered a copy of
The Monkey Wrench Gang
, coincidentally by Sanders’s friend Edward Abbey. Gilkey had the book shipped to an address in Palo Alto that was actually the Westin Hotel.

Gilkey then called a dealer in New York, and another in Chicago, but either they didn’t have what he was looking for or the credit card numbers were rejected. Last, he dialed the number of Ken Lopez, a dealer in western Massachusetts. He had noticed Lopez’s advertisement in
Firsts
, the magazine devoted to book collecting. He identified himself as Heath Hawkins
⁶
and said he wanted to get something in the $5,000 to $7,000 range. “Hawkins” then asked about their copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
, by John Steinbeck. Lopez described the book for him, noting that it cost $6,500, and the two men chatted for a while. “Hawkins” seemed genial and somewhat knowledgeable. After their discussion, Lopez agreed to bring the price down to $5,850.

Then “Hawkins” asked Lopez if he thought he should have a clamshell box made for the book, and something clicked in Lopez’s memory. About six months earlier, another man, “Andrew Meade,” had called him, inquiring about a first edition of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, by Ken Kesey, priced at $7,500—and he had asked about having a clamshell box made. The credit card had not gone through, and although “Meade” had said he would call back with another credit card number, he never did, because it was Gilkey, and he had only one card in Meade’s name.

Lopez knew that a colleague of his, Kevin Johnson of Royal Books in Baltimore, had also been hit by “Andrew Meade” months before and lost a first edition of Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road
, worth $4,500. Lopez had read enough of Sanders’s e-mail warnings about the “Nor Cal Credit Card Thief” to be fairly certain that he had the man they were looking for on the line. After “Hawkins” gave Lopez an American Express number, Lopez told him he’d run the order through, and that “Hawkins” should call him back. A quick call to American Express revealed that the address “Hawkins” had given him was not the one listed on the account.

When “Hawkins” called back, Lopez asked him, “What about this billing address?”

“Oh, yeah,” said “Hawkins,” “that’s not the billing address. The billing address is actually in New York.”

“Oh, really?” said Lopez.

“Hawkins” then gave the correct billing address.

“I’m going to run this order through again,” said Lopez. “So why don’t you call back in a few minutes.”

Lopez quickly Googled the shipping address “Hawkins” had given him. It was the Sheraton Hotel in Palo Alto, just down the street from the Westin. (Gilkey was planning to pick up both books on the same day.) Lopez called American Express, who contacted the cardholder, Heather Hawkins, in New York, and asked if she had ordered a rare book. She had no idea what they were talking about.

When “Hawkins” called back to make sure the order had gone through, Lopez’s partner asked him to hold a moment while Lopez completed a call on another line. The man on the other line was Ken Sanders, whom Lopez had just alerted to what was going on. When Sanders heard the details, he suggested that Lopez string “Hawkins” along, complete the order, and agree to send the book by overnight delivery. After hanging up, Lopez picked up the other line, where “Hawkins” was waiting, and confirmed that the order was ready to go.

While Gilkey was pleased that he’d “nailed it,” Sanders wasted no time. He contacted San Jose police detective Ken Munson, whom Kevin Johnson, the Baltimore dealer, had spoken with when he filed a complaint about
On the Road
having been stolen. Sanders reminded Munson of that theft and the string of other thefts he suspected were committed by this man “Hawkins” with whom Lopez had just spoken. The “trilogy of Kens,” as Sanders calls himself, Lopez, and Munson, got to work.

 

 

 

 

Detective Munson is a reader of detective novels, Michael Connelly’s especially.
⁷
He’s an inquisitive man, often bored by the usual Internet fraud cases he pursues, and was intrigued by this guy stealing books. It wasn’t the kind of case he usually took on, especially since the victim was a citizen of Massachusetts, not San Jose; but his high-tech unit, which dealt mostly with fraud, was fairly autonomous. And it was true that the hotel was in his jurisdiction.

Once Munson got Sanders’s message, he had to work fast: the book—a facsimile library edition Lopez had sent, in case the sting was not successful—was to be delivered the next morning. Munson thought this thief seemed pretty sharp. The dealers and credit card holders he had ripped off wouldn’t know of the fraud until a month or two afterward, when the bills arrived. And once notified, when they looked back over their records, all the dealers would find was a phone number, which would turn out to be a pay phone, and an address, which would turn out to be a hotel. Plus, this thief had been hitting different geographic areas, different jurisdictions. Even if the police could get a warrant on somebody in another state, the DA was not going to spend a thousand dollars to have him extradited, or pay his airfare. Munson had come across criminals who know that if they steal a small enough amount from a large enough group of people from different states, they may never be touched. He figured Gilkey was one of them. Munson agreed with Sanders and Lopez that whoever had stolen from Kevin Johnson was probably the same thief who had just called Lopez. Worst case, he thought, they’d spend five hours on it, and call it off if the thief didn’t show.

Munson contacted the Sheraton and found that there was a reservation for Heather and Heath Hawkins, which Gilkey had made shortly before he asked the hotel to hold all his packages. The hotel sits near Stanford University and appears to suffer from a split personality: Spanish-style architecture (stucco arches, red-tiled roofs) on the outside, pan-Asian details (Chinese lions, lacquered screens) on the inside. Also inside now were two undercover detectives, a woman and a man, seated comfortably in jeans and polo shirts, looking like a couple on vacation. They had arrived early, to be sure to be there for the FedEx delivery, which was guaranteed by ten thirty. They assumed the thief would try to arrive soon after the delivery. Outside, Munson had set up surveillance with unmarked cars in the parking lot. Inside, hotel employees had been alerted to give a signal when “Hawkins” came up to the desk and asked for his package. Of course, none of them really had any idea who or what they were looking for. The thief could be a man, a woman, two men—they didn’t know.

While Munson waited, Sanders tried to organize his colleagues. In order to convict Gilkey, he e-mailed them, they needed to send any information about recent thefts that matched Gilkey’s MO as soon as possible.

The responses poured in, but not all were helpful.
⁸
A dealer from New York wrote that she had been approached twice by a man who said that he was buying books for the child of his girlfriend, but because she had found that the shipping addresses had not matched the billing addresses, she had not put the orders through.

Sanders wrote back:
I need details. If he approaches you again, please play along and agree to send the book. Right this minute a motel in California is being staked out by police and he’s expecting The Grapes of Wrath in the morning. If all goes well, he’ll be in jail this time tomorrow. Confidential . . . if we don’t get him, we need to run another sting operation.

Later that day, Peter Howard, of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, wrote to Sanders about having lost two books in 2000 to a man who had sent his elderly “uncle” in to pick them up.

Then Erik Heldfond of Heldfond Book Gallery, where Gilkey had stolen two books in 2001, wrote to Sanders that his wife, Lane, had been in the store that day. At the time, she believed she was handing the books to the caller’s cousin.
It might be helpful for her to see a photo of guy in custody, as she has a sharp eye and longgggg memory,
he wrote. She estimated that he was
in his late 20s, early 30s, 5’9”, brown hair, medium build, clean shaven, GAP type attire.
She noted that he didn’t speak normally, saying he’d just come from the dentist.

Ed Smith, of Washington, reminded Sanders that he had lost a
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller,
near fine in dust jacket, real clean copy and a 1/99 ltd. ed. book by Samuel Beckett titled No Knife bound in leather and with a glassine wrapper in a box (fine condition, as new).
Of the sting, he wrote:
Great news . . . mums still the word, right?

Shortly after, Sanders sent an e-mail to the trade, summarizing what they had learned so far and asking dealers who had been victims if they thought they might be able to identify the thief in a photo lineup.

 

 

 

 

Gilkey spent the night in the Windham Hotel in San Francisco. The next morning, he emptied his pockets of anything that might identify him, taking only his hotel room key, a phone card, a couple of credit card receipts, and $20 to use for lunch. At around eleven A.M., he boarded the Caltrain for the hourlong ride. Out the window he watched graffiti-smothered industrial buildings speed by, then the back sides of down-and-out neighborhoods, and eventually the palm trees and foreign-car dealerships on the edge of Palo Alto. There, he got off the train and walked two short blocks to the Sheraton.

Strolling through the parking lot, Gilkey noticed the FedEx truck outside. If the book had not yet been delivered, it would be momentarily. As he approached the front desk, he thought he heard a click and people talking, the way they do on a police radio, but decided it was nothing and ignored it. He was just a few feet away from getting
The Grapes of Wrath
.

When Gilkey asked for his package, the hotel clerk went to a back area where they kept the mail. Seconds later, the undercover agents handcuffed him, announcing he was under arrest. They radioed Munson, who was waiting in the parking lot.

“I’m just coming from San Francisco,” Gilkey explained, “on my way to the Stanford library to do some research.”

“So what are you doing here?” Munson asked him.

“A man on Caltrain offered to pay me twenty bucks to pick up a book for him here.”

Munson doubted the story and thought Gilkey looked “nervous and shifty-eyed,” but he had dealt with significant cases of fraud in which a transient was paid to do a pickup. There was a chance the story was true.

“Okay, let’s take this a step further,” said one of the officers. “We’re going to unhandcuff you, take you back to the Caltrain station, give you the package—and you go meet the man, point him out to us.”

“And don’t try to run,” one of the officers warned him. “We’ll be following you.”

Gilkey considered the warning as he walked to the Caltrain station with a half-dozen police officers following him. Stanford University was about a mile away, and if he made a mad dash for it, he might just lose the cops.
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
he wondered.
I don’t think they will shoot me
. But a mile was a long way. As the undercover officers followed him, he secretly chewed up the credit card receipts in his pocket and spat them out. They reached the station, but instead of running, he stalled for time, approaching various people, asking them if they had seen the man he’d told the police about.

Munson asked the people working at Caltrain if there had been a man hanging around who fit Gilkey’s description of him: white male, forty to fifty, white hair, walking with a cane. There had not. After Gilkey had wandered around the station for about thirty minutes, it was pretty clear to the officers that he was lying. They took him in for questioning.

At the police station, Gilkey presented himself as a helpful citizen who had only been trying to assist a man with a cane who couldn’t walk very well.
⁹
While he told the officers his name, he wouldn’t answer other questions, such as where he lived. They took the hotel card key in his pocket, but he wouldn’t tell them which hotel it was from. Munson then discovered that Gilkey, who had actually given them his real name, was on probation.

And then it began to unravel. Gilkey told the police that the man on the train had instructed him, “Just pick up the book that’s waiting for Heath Hawkins,” yet at the counter he had said, “I’m picking up the book for Heather Hawkins.” Heather Hawkins was the name on the credit card.

“So how did you know the name Heather? You told us just Heath,” asked Munson.

“Oh yeah, maybe the guy told me Heather and Heath Hawkins,” said Gilkey.

“You’re lying,” said Munson.

Gilkey, who seemed quite calm at this point, fecklessly stuck with his story, but Munson had a toehold. Then, in Gilkey’s pocket, Munson found a crumpled prepaid phone card, which the telephone company traced to three calls made at 10:11, 10:56, and 11:25 A.M. the previous day. They were all to Ken Lopez, the Massachusetts dealer.