The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
April 28, 2005, was bright and mild, the kind of spring day in New York City that seems full of promise, and on the corner of Park Avenue and East Sixty-sixth Street a queue of optimistic people was growing. It was opening day of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, and they were waiting to begin the treasure hunt. The annual fair is held at the Park Avenue Armory, an anachronistic, castle-like building with towers and musket ports that one historian described as large enough to allow a four-abreast formation to march in and out of the building. There were no such formations when I arrived, but a steady stream of book-hungry people marching through the doors, eager to be among the first to see and touch the objects of their desire: modern first editions, illuminated texts, Americana, law books, cookbooks, children's books, World War II histories, incunabula (Latin for "in the cradle," books from printing's infancy, roughly 1450 to 1500), Pulitzer Prize winners, natural histories, erotica, and countless other temptations.
Inside, security guards had taken their positions and were prepared to explain, twice to the indignant, that all but the smallest purses would have to be left behind at the coat check. Overhead lights shone bright and hot, like spotlights aimed at a stage, and as I walked into the fair, I felt like an actor without a script. Ever since I was a teenager, I've been an inveterate flea market shopper, on the prowl for beautiful and interesting objects. Some of my favorite recent finds are an old doctor's bag I use as a purse, wooden forms for ships' gears, which now hang on a wall in my house, and an old watch repairman's kit with glass vials of minuscule parts. (When I was a teen, it was costume jewelry and bootleg eight-track tapes to play in my boyfriend's van.) This book fair was altogether different. A hybrid of museum and marketplace, it was filled with millions of dollars' worth of books and enough weathered leather spines to make a decorator swoon. Collectors strode with purpose toward specific booths, and dealers adjusted the displays of their wares on shelves while eyeing one another's latest and most valuable finds, perched in sparkling glass cases. They even set some of their goods on countertops, where anyone who pleased would be able to pick them up and leaf through them. Everyone but me seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. But what I sought was not as clear-cut as first editions or illuminated manuscripts. I love to read books and I appreciate their aesthetic charms, but I don't collect them; I had come to this fair to understand what makes others do so. I wanted a close-up view into the rare book world, a place where the customs were utterly foreign to me. With any luck -- something I'm sure every person at this fair was wishing for -- I also hoped to discover something about those whose craving leads them to steal the books they love.
To that end, I was here in part to meet with Ken Sanders, the Salt Lake City rare book dealer and self-styled sleuth I had spoken with on the phone. Sanders has a reputation as a man who relishes catching book thieves, and like a cop who has been on the force for years without a partner, he also savors any opportunity to share a good story. I had called him a few weeks earlier, in preparation for our meeting, and during that first conversation, he had told me about the Red Jaguar Guy, who stole valuable copies of the Book of Mormon from him; the Yugoslavian Scammers, whom he helped the FBI track down one weekend; and the Irish Gas Station Gang, who routinely placed fraudulent orders with dealers through the Internet and had them shipped to a gas station in Northern Ireland. But these were preliminary stories, warm-ups for the big one: In 1999, Sanders had begun working as the volunteer security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America. In short, the job was to alert fellow dealers whenever he got wind of a theft so that they could be on the lookout for the missing books.
With four months until Gilkey was to begin his sen tence, he and his father drove up and down the coast of California, staying for days at a time in Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, sometimes making stops at the family's home in Modesto. It was an extended vacation with an impending end, paid for with Gilkey's father's savings and stolen credit card numbers.
On March 14, they stayed at a hotel at the San Francisco airport, because parking was cheaper than at hotels downtown. It was a lovely day, and they set out in a rental car to the Westin Hotel. There, Gilkey opened the Yellow Pages and turned to the listings for rare book stores. He had already done preliminary research on his computer in Modesto and was especially impressed by the extensive collection of the Brick Row Book Shop. As he dialed their number, he pulled a credit card receipt from his pocket.
Gilkey identified himself as Dan Weaver and spoke with Andrew Clark, who was impressed with "Weaver" and treated him with respect because he seemed to be just the sort of person who might become a good customer.
"I'm looking for a gift," said "Weaver," in his polite voice. "Something in the two-thousand-to-three-thousand-dollar range. Maybe Thackeray's Vanity Fair."
"I'm afraid we haven't got it," said Clark. "But I've got another nineteenth-century novel you might be interested in: The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy."
"Hmm ..." "Weaver" seemed to be considering.
"It's a two-volume set," added Clark, "with brown half morocco by Riviere, marbled sides, gilt decorated and lettered spines. A first edition, fine copy, twenty-five hundred."
"Well, I think that fits the bill," said "Weaver," who then read his credit card number to Clark and said he would pick up the book later that afternoon.
Clark carefully wrapped The Mayor of Casterbridge in plain brown paper and, before heading out to lunch, informed owner John Crichton that someone was going to stop by and pick it up.
Later that day, a man in his late seventies rushed into the store. He told Crichton he was there to pick up a book for his son, Dan Weaver.
"I'm in a hurry" -- he scowled -- "double-parked. I gotta get the book."
Crichton checked to make sure the credit card charge had been authorized. It had, so he handed over the book with a copy of the invoice.
Gilkey's father rode the elevator down, climbed into the rental car, and gave the book to him.
Gilkey would later explain to me that the reason his father picked up the book was that he needed to use a bathroom, so Gilkey sent him in to take care of his needs and do the pickup. He insisted that his father did not know that he (Gilkey) had purchased the book with a stolen credit card number. But his father had said he was there to pick up a book for Dan Weaver; there was no way he was unaware of his complicity. Again, Gilkey's fierce denial of his father's role was more perplexing than his father's involvement, although both continued to bewilder me.
To Gilkey, having a book like The Mayor of Casterbridge -- old and fine, a piece of literary history -- in his hands, felt deeply satisfying. There was nothing like it. He held it, knowing that it was worth something, that "everyone wanted it," but that he was the only one who owned it. It was thrilling. When he was done examining it, he carefully laid it down in the backseat. He was a little nervous during the pickup, but his father had come through fine. They were both relieved as they drove away.
A month later, the real Dan Weaver, legitimate owner of the credit card, called Crichton and demanded, "Why did you charge me twenty-five hundred dollars -- and for a?!" Crichton looked into it and discovered that the order was indeed fraudulent. How could this have happened? He had once been security chair of the ABAA, and he was careful. At once, he e-mailed Sanders and gave him the details.
As I spent time among rare books and their collectors, as strongly as I felt this power and their manifold other attractions, I did not succumb to full-blown bibliomania, as I thought I might. I did, however, come to understand more fully the satisfaction of the pursuit. Hunting down treasures for a collection brings its own rewards, but, ultimately even more satisfying, building it is a way of creating a narrative. When books are joined with others that have traits in common they form a larger story that can reveal something wholly new about the history of democracy, or Renaissance cooking, or Hells Angels who pen novels. When I first talked to rare book lovers, I was enamored of their stories of discovery and theft, but what I didn't realize was that the most important stories they had to tell were those formed through their collections. They were not only "salvaging civilization," but also, by linking books, engaging in acts of interpretation.
Although I haven't become a bibliomaniac, I now see myself as an ardent collector, no longer of carnelians and Pixy Stix straws, but of stories. Searching for them, researching them, and writing them gives my life shape and purpose the way that hunting, gathering, and cataloging books does for the collector. We're all building narratives. As I thought about Gilkey's and Sanders's stories, and those of the other collectors and thieves I encountered, they merged in my mind into a collection of their own, the larger story of which is a testament to the passion for books -- their content and histories, their leathery, papery, smooth, musty, warped, foxed, torn, engraved, and inscribed bodies. This passion I share with them all.
THE LAST TIME I met with Gilkey, I wondered aloud whether he had considered the possible consequences of his life, his story, being made public. He muttered something about a statute of limitations and stared at my notebook as if it held his future. For a moment, he looked frozen. Then he tossed out something about how the book might possibly hurt his future employment opportunities.
"But no, I'm not worried about it," he said, regaining his composure. "I mean, I gotta check certain legalities. Make sure I don't get charged for things."
Then, as quickly as you can slam a book shut, Gilkey, in characteristic fashion, turned his attention from dangerous risk to glorious possibility.
"I was thinking of the ending of your book," he told me. "I could write a series of detective novels. The first one would be about a serial killer who's fascinated by the poem 'The Devil's Walk,' written in 1820 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is a very striking poem. It mentions bookstores and sort of an obsession.... Anyway, in my novel the FBI has to call in the foremost expert in the world of books and poems and classical literature, because there are no book dealers that can solve the murderer's crimes. This expert is someone who, as Ken Sanders says, went over to the dark side and found all these ways to steal, to accumulate the greatest collection of rare books in the world. And then he had to go to prison, but now he's out, so they called him in as a consultant. Unfortunately, he's a former convict. You know, slightly crazy, but he stole rare books. I would base it a little on me.... I'd be set up like this dark figure. And maybe I'd try to have more access to certain books that the government keeps hidden. You know the book. You know what I mean.... There's always that one book you can never get your hands on. Maybe he's working with the FBI just to have access to that one book.... Maybe it's at the Library of Congress, maybe a special hidden book, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the diary of JFK's killing, something like that. And maybe there's a surprise ending. Now he has access to the book, so maybe ..." Gilkey paused a moment before delivering his ending. "Maybe still, I'm a thief.
"What do you think about that idea? Your honest opinion."