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

by Allison Hoover Bartlett

  As a child, Serrano’s aunt, who had worked as a book-binder in El Salvador, gave him a set of leather-bound books, and he recognized how special they were. At sixteen, he worked as a delivery boy for a florist in posh Pacific Heights. “Almost every house I went into had a big wall of books,” he said. To own such a wall became a dream. At twenty-three, while working as a tow-truck driver, he bought his first valuable book, Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger, for $100. “Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorites,” he said, “but I couldn’t afford it.” After that first find, he began scouring estate sales, Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. He didn’t like driving the tow truck, but the advantage of the job was that between pickups he could study dealers’ catalogs, memorize the information, and go on searching expeditions. “I’d walk into a thrift store and I’d know what was valuable,” he said. He wanted to make a living out of it, so at first he would spend $2 or $3 for a book and turn it around for $20, $100. He was also assembling his own collection, so he would buy books by obscure authors whose value he recognized, and later trade them for books in the categories he was collecting: Californian, Latin American, and twentieth-century literature. One of his favorite possessions is the first printed description of the Bear Flag Revolt, the 1846 American revolt against the authorities of the Mexican province of California, which later became the state of the same name. “It used to be,” said Serrano, “I was happy finding books worth a hundred dollars and paying only a couple bucks for them, but as I learned about books that have changed people, controversial books like Orwell’s 1984, important books—that’s what I really want to collect. It’s the hunt that keeps it alive. I go to these estate sales where people walk right by the books; they’re only interested in furniture or art. Once I sat on the floor and started pulling titles off the shelf: first-edition Hemingways, Faulkners. It was amazing.” Like adventurers who still trawl the sea for centuries-old shipwrecks’ loot, book hunters’ hope and determination is fed by stories like Serrano’s. He still visits thrift shops, but he also likes going to fairs and rare book shops, where he can test his knowledge against the dealers’. He has taken what he has learned as an amateur book appraiser and is now building his own rare book business online. He explains the draw like this: “You see something you can’t afford, but you buy it anyway,” he said. “My wife calls it an addiction, but finding those books is such a good feeling.”

  Sometimes that good feeling is experienced also by those who help collectors with their searching. Several times, Sanders had mentioned a London man, David Hosein, who travels the world for business and, while doing so, stops by shops for books written by vagabonds and other outsiders. In an e-mail to me, Hosein described his collection:

  My collection is focused on people (iconoclasts, cults and groups) and activities (legal and illegal) outside norms of society. For instance: prison, outlaw bikers, hobos, pimps, druggies, con men, environmental activism, training shoe (sneaker) collectors, pre hip hop culture and Japanese protest books. At the heart of the collection is a large number of works by prisoners.

  I have been buying avidly both 20th century first-hand account nonfiction titles and photographic monographs in these areas for more than 10 years. I am only interested in books in fine condition. In this regard I am as nerdy as your regular Stephen King freaks.

  Sanders is enamored of this collection’s originality—and so am I. In truth, such collections keep the business fresh for collectors and dealers like Sanders, who now keeps an eye out for books by hoboes, vagabonds, and the like, to put aside for him.

  “Someone like Hosein,” said Sanders, “he’s ahead of the curve, pioneering a new collection, and people pay attention to it.”

  According to Sanders, finding a buyer for a collection as original as Hosein’s requires as much ingenuity as building it, and it’s more likely that a visionary dealer or institution would purchase it than an individual collector. “After all,” Sanders said, “from a collecting point of view, the finding and the acquiring are what fuel the collector and the collection. Often, collectors burn out or let go of collections when they have been so narrowly defined as to preclude the acquisition of any new material. The collection reaches a level of stasis and the collector becomes burned out.” A collector like Hosein probably doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about who will buy his books. Amassing a collection like this seems to be a personal quest. But when he decides to sell it, like any collection, the effort put into bringing the books together will pay off; its value will be greater than the sum of its parts.

  Even when a book is not part of a collection, if it carries the cachet of being a “classic,” its value climbs. A friend gave me an article she came across in Worth magazine that said that literary classics have outpaced the stock and bond markets in the past twenty years. A graph boasted an almost cartoon-like upward-reaching line demonstrating what a good investment such a collection can be. Naively, I assumed that this was good news for dealers: if people learned that collecting rare books was a smart investment, business would increase. I wrote to Sanders about it, and he responded in character:

  I actually don’t think that this is necessarily a good thing. Books should always be acquired for the sheer love and joy of it. Thinking of them as investment objects first turns them into mere widgets and commodities. It reduces their cultural heritage and diminishes not only the books, but their authors and readers as well. Let’s leave the pork belly future to Wall Street.

  Without Wall Street many forms of books, incunables, high spots of modern literature, are already unobtainable by the average collector or even fairly well-to-do collectors. Think Great Gatsby at over a $100k. . . . Look what happened in the art market, where paintings that used to cost thousands are now hundreds of thousands, and paintings that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars are now millions of dollars. . . .

  If Wall Street gets hold of books and turns them into high priced investment widgets, then look out. No one will be able to afford them any more and some of the joy of collecting will be gone. The vast bulk of collecting is done in the few hundred to few thousand dollar range. . . .

  If you collect what you love and enjoy, and always buy the best you can afford, and buy copies in the best condition available, your books will always prove to be a good investment.

  IT WASN’T LONG before Gilkey began snagging more receipts at Saks. He regarded it as a business, and his goal was to pocket two or three credit card numbers a day. His plans worked without a hitch. It was fun, he thought. When he did pickups, there was a moment of exhilaration, but then it was time to move on to the next one.

  Sometimes Gilkey’s help was needed off the floor. He would call customers to inform them of special events in a room equipped with a phone, a computer, and a brown envelope filled with receipts. It was a temptation too strong to resist.

  Gilkey wasn’t very busy, so he used the computer to research books and peruse booksellers’ websites. Once he had decided on something he would like, always an author or title he had heard of, he would wait for his lunch break, then head to a nearby hotel, one like the Crowne Plaza or the St. Francis, any that had phones with privacy. He never called in a book order from Saks, for fear the call would be traced to him.

  After a while, though, his success seemed too good to be true. He became suspicious of exceedingly wealthy customers. Gilkey said that when the CEO of Netscape bought shoes, he resisted the urge to pocket the receipt. Once, when the chairman called about a shoe, and Gilkey’s manager asked him to go to the shoe department to help out, he thought it was a trap. That day, one platinum card-wielding customer after another approached him, buying $800 shoes, $900 shoes. He felt sure that Saks was onto him, putting temptation in his way. At the end of the day, he ripped up all the receipts he had pocketed.

  His fears about Saks were unfounded. But in January 2001, when Gilkey’s parole officer learned that he was working in San Francisco, he put a stop to it. The terms of his parole had included staying i
n Modesto, so the officer told Gilkey to find a job there instead. Gilkey was incensed. Working at Saks had been one of the best things that had happened to him. It was easy work, he got to dress nicely, and he liked his coworkers. Most important, of course, the job offered him proximity to all those high-limit credit cards. Plus, he had just started working another part-time job in San Francisco, conducting audience surveys for a movie distributor, which was almost as good a gig as the job at Saks. He was working in the movie industry, he told himself, and for someone with a fascination with celebrity, it was exciting. But when that employer did a background check on Gilkey and found he had a criminal record, he was fired. He had been working there only two weeks.

  As if being forced out of his jobs was not bad enough, on January 14, the Oakland Raiders, Gilkey’s favorite football team, lost an AFC championship game to the Baltimore Ravens, and they lost big: 16 to 3. He and his father had watched the game together, and they were sure the Raiders would be victorious. When they weren’t, Gilkey felt as slighted as he had by the parole officer. So he did what he usually did when he felt wronged: he stole a book, this time using a bad check. It was momentary succor for perceived injustices. He figured it was harmless, only $200, but the police were notified, and he was arrested.

  According to Gilkey, in court, the public defender suggested they claim mental defect, which Gilkey considered a terrific idea. But when the judge told him he would spend a year in a mental institution, Gilkey told him, “Forget that. There’s nothing wrong with me,” and agreed to a sentence of six and a half months. The way sentences for this type of offense go, he knew that the actual time spent behind bars would likely be half that time. Gilkey then requested a delay, and the judge agreed to set his starting date in June, four months away. Fired up by the loss of his jobs and a prison sentence he considered unfair, Gilkey knew exactly how he would spend his time.

  You want to fight? he thought. His challenge was directed at the world, with particular aim at rare book dealers. Then it’s war.

  7

  Trilogy of Kens

  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 book?!” 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. Sanders immediately sent an e-mail to the ABAA and ILAB, noting the content of the thief’s phone calls to Brick Row, the physical particulars of the stolen copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge , and most important, a description of the thief: elderly, pretty shabby-looking, gruff voice.

  Now everyone could be on the lookout.

  A couple of months later, Gilkey was eager to get a book from another county. He had been having one success after another and was feeling bold, confident. He called Heldfond Book Gallery in San Anselmo, a small town in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. He spoke with proprietor Lane Heldfond, telling her he was on the road and wanted to buy a couple of gifts: a children’s book and an autographed book. Heldfond suggested The Patchwork Girl of Oz, listed at $1,800, and Joseph in Egypt, a book by one of Gilkey’s favorite authors, Thomas Mann, autographed and priced at $850. He said that he was, at that moment, looking at their website, which was a careless slip, since he had just said he was calling from the road,1 but Heldfond, who noticed the slip, didn’t call him on it. Gilkey told her his cousin would pick up the books the next day.

  The next day was sunny and clear, so Gilkey decided to take a ferry across the Bay. San Anselmo is a sleepy little town, one of the few in wealthy Marin County that still benefits from the charm of disheveled thrift stores and coffee shops that pour coffee-to-go into cups without logos. Occupying the angled end of a wedge-shaped building, Heldfond Gallery is a triangular shop with a small cushioned window seat at its tightest corner. Heldfond is a petite woman in her forties, with olive skin, long, wavy dark hair, and a disarming smile. In addition to working as a bookseller, she is a sculptor, and her visual sense is reflected on the shelves. Heldfond and her husband, Erik, had both been lifelong collectors when they opened the store in 1991. They bought what they could afford and hoped prices would rise; they were usually right, because despite the tough climate for mom-and-pop stores, the business grew.

  After Gilkey placed his order for the two books, Heldfond hung up and called to her husband.

  “Something’s not right,” she said. She had a bad feeling about the order. It had been
too easy.

  “Was the charge authorized?” he asked.

  It was, so he assured her there was nothing to worry about.

  Heldfond pulled the books from the shelves—Joseph in Egypt in its somber black covers, The Patchwork Girl of Oz in its vibrantly illustrated dust jacket—wrapped them in paper, and set them under the counter.

  When Gilkey arrived in San Anselmo, he walked to the post office a block away from the store and placed another call to Heldfond to make sure the order had gone through. It had.

  At the threshold of Heldfond Book Gallery, Gilkey looked around to make sure there weren’t any undercover cops’ cars parked on the street, then walked in with one hand covering his mouth.

  “I’ve just come from the dentist,” he said to Heldfond, talking out of the side of his mouth in an effort to distort his voice so that she would not recognize it as the caller’s. He knew it was a gamble and began to feel agitated. After all, he was supposed to be the caller’s cousin. He decided to skip the small talk; he stayed in the doorway and left as soon as he got the books, making a run for the bus stop once he was out of view. Now he had two more books to deliver to the storage facility.

  On a wall in Heldfond Gallery hung a bookmark with a quotation from Oscar Wilde: “I can resist everything except temptation.”

  I BEGAN to sense that the urge to collect is not born all of a sudden, but gains momentum after, say, one or two purchases. I wondered, if I bought a few first editions of books that had inspired me in my own writing, whether I might feel what collectors felt: I might actually become one of them. A good place to start would be first editions of some of my favorite works of narrative nonfiction: In Cold Blood, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, The Professor and The Mad-man , The Orchid Thief. I began perusing online booksellers’ websites to get a sense for how much they would cost. As I read descriptions of inscriptions and other one-of-a-kind traits, I felt the first stirrings of what I imagined was the collector’s hunger.