The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (22 page)

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.

LATE THAT FALL, I visited Heldfond Book Gallery, one of Gilkey’s victims. I had spoken with Erik Heldfond on the phone, and he suggested I meet with his wife, Lane, since she was the one who had dealt with Gilkey.

When I walked into the store, Lane was helping a couple of British men who appeared to be regulars. I didn’t want to interrupt a possible sale, so I wandered around the store. Most of the books had gorgeous covers, and they sat facing out, rather than spine-to-spine, as if they knew their best sides. That day there was a spectacular first-edition
Thunder-ball
by Ian Fleming, a copy of
The Dial
with the first appearance of T. S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land
, Richard Avedon’s
In the American West
, and many first-edition children’s books, such as
Green Eggs and Ham
,
Andersen’s Fairy Tales
,
Elves and Fairies
,
Peter Pan and Wendy
. From her perch on a chair behind the counter, Lane glanced at me a couple of times with a suspicious look, and I wondered if she thought I might be a shoplifter. When the customers were gone, I approached the counter and introduced myself.

“Remind me what publication you’re from,” she said curtly, looking me up and down. Erik had told her I was working on a story about Gilkey, and she was clearly displeased. “Do you have a business card?”

I explained that I had left my cards in another bag, but that I was writing a story for
San Francisco Magazine
. She wrote down my name and phone number on a piece of scrap paper next to the cash register. I doubted she needed my number. The gesture seemed to be a way for her to inform me that she was no fool; she intended to look me up.

After Lane gave me the once-over, she reluctantly agreed to talk to me. She recounted the story of Gilkey’s placing the order, how he’d tried to disguise his voice by covering his mouth when he picked up the books, and how she had identified him in the online photo lineup. I knew most of the story already from talking with Detective Munson and Sanders. But they had not communicated to me one key detail: Lane Heldfond was angry. With few exceptions, dealers do not get rich from selling rare books; for most of them, a five-thousand-dollar loss is huge. Three years after the theft, she was still livid with Gilkey, and now it was clear that she was unhappy with me as well.

“What you’re doing, is, well, it might be glorifying him,” she said, noting the publicity that serial killer Charles Manson received: “Everyone knows who he is.”

It was a bit of a stretch, I thought, to link Manson, the murderer, with Gilkey, the book thief, but I knew what she was getting at. They were criminals who received attention she thought unworthy for their deeds.

“This business is a labor of love,” Lane said, and with her hand on her heart, she added, “It gets you here. I feel such anger for this guy.”

Lane didn’t want to talk anymore, so I put my notebook away. But as I was about to walk out the door, she stopped me.

“You know,” she said, “we have really special books here. A lot of book-loving people who come in, they’ve never seen books like this, and chances are, they’ll never see them again for the rest of their lives. We’ve worked hard for fifteen years, first buying eight-dollar books, hoping they’ll go up, then eighty-dollar books, and so on. We’ve worked to build a gem of a shop, something unique. . . . We want these books to be with people who love them, people who pay for them, who appreciate them. . . . Gilkey makes me so angry. You feel violated. When he stole those books, he took them from me, from him,” she said, indicating her husband, and then in a lowered voice, turning for a moment toward her daughter, a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl of nine or ten who was helping her dust the bookshelves, she said, “He took them from
her
.”

What Heldfond said hit home, not only because of how she and her family had been personally affected by the thefts, but also in how she described what is on her shelves. Those books that we “may never see again for the rest of our lives” are more than just beautiful objects, and their physicality makes their contents seem more meaningful, somehow. Her rage was justified.

 

 

 

 

I had been thinking about the “thingness” of books ever since my first encounter with the
Kräutterbuch
and my book fair visit, but something Heldfond had said made me think, too, about the physical book’s place, not just in larger history but in our own personal histories. This was an idea I couldn’t get away from when, several months later, a friend of mine, Andy Kieffer, began extolling the virtues of his e-book. Andy and his wife had each bought an e-book shortly before moving to Guadalajara. They were glad they had, since it’s nearly impossible to find books in English there, and the mail system is unreliable. He found he had no problem reading Chekhov’s
The Seagull
or Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
(two texts he recently purchased) on screen instead of between covers, and had now begun carrying the daily
New York Times
, several issues of
The New Yorker
, a language dictionary, and some trashy beach reading all on his device at once.

“I never know in advance what I’m going to want to read,” he explained.

Fine for him,
I thought. I still couldn’t fathom why anyone who
does
have easy access to traditional books would make the switch. But then I thought of my teenaged children, both so accustomed to reading from their computers much of the day, not just instant messages and e-mails, but also long articles for homework. They will have no objection to reading e-books. At the same time, though, I think that may only strengthen their attachment to the physical books they do keep. One of my son’s high school graduation presents, something I bought at the last minute, is a black pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution (he’s interested in history and law). Out of all his presents, a laptop for college included, it was this inexpensive, tiny book that my usually reserved son literally held to his heart, saying, “I’m going to keep this forever.” And my daughter now has on her shelf my mother’s (and once my grandmother’s) copies of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s
Anne of Green Gables
,
Anne of the Orchard
, and
Kilmeny of the Orchard
. “When I open those books and start reading, I like thinking about where they have been, who else has read them,” she explained. “It’s like they have more than one story to tell.”

Physical artifacts carry memory and meaning, and this is as true of important historical texts as it is of cherished childhood books. Sitting in any library, surrounded by high shelves of books, I sense the profoundly rich history of scholarship as something real, and it’s both humbling and inspiring. This manifestation of reality is true of other artifacts as well. We can read about the Holocaust or where Emily Dickinson wrote her “letter to the world” or where Jim Morrison is buried. We can view online photos of all these places. Still, each year, thousands of people visit Auschwitz, The Homestead, and Père Lachaise. I suppose our desire to be near books rises from a similar impulse; they root us in something larger than ourselves, something real. For this reason, I am sure that hardbound books will survive, even long after e-books have become popular. When I walk down the street and almost everyone I pass is sequestered in his own iPod or cell phone universe, I can’t help thinking that our connection to books is still, after all these centuries, as important as it is intangible. It is this connection that makes my parents’ and grandparents’ old books so special to me, and the
Kräutterbuch
so sublime.