A MYSTERY

The curious case of the stolen Hemingway letters

Taken from a Toronto shop in 1993, book dealer believes they are still out there.

BILL SCHILLER

FEATURE WRITER



They moved through an alley behind Queen St. W. under cover of darkness.

They carried a ladder, a crowbar, a handsaw and gloves.

When they were finished, they had pulled off what is believed to be the biggest literary heist in North America — $250,000 worth of rare books and letters of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Morley Callaghan.

Since that night, Oct. 15, 1993, the goods have never been recovered.

Today, their estimated worth is $1 million.

And Toronto book dealer David Mason, whose shop housed the material, believes they are still out there.

Dave Mason believes that the letters from Ernest Hemingway, Morley Callaghan and F. Scott Fitzgerald, taken from his downtown shop in 1993, are still out there. ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE/TORONTO STAR

“I’ve always hoped that I’d solve this crime before I die,” says Mason, a soft-spoken man of 73. “I still hope that.”

The most prized part of the package is letters dealing with one of the most famous fights in literary history — a sensational 1929 boxing match in Paris between two former Toronto Star reporters, Hemingway and Callaghan, during which Hemingway was bloodied, then knocked to the mat.

Fitzgerald had been timekeeper.

And as the story of this “singular event” grew and spread, landing in gossip columns in New York, Hemingway became enraged.

He would never forgive Callaghan, and his friendship with Fitzgerald would dwindle.

Almost two years to the day following the Toronto theft, hopes soared that the books and letters would be recovered when police arrested a key suspect.

A handsome, charming 22-year-old named Robert Pacheco was arrested following a home invasion and later led police to his Toronto apartment where, from beneath his bed, he produced a grey suitcase.

Inside were items taken from Mason’s shop that night.

But not the good stuff.

The estate of the late Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, pictured with wife Loretto, hired David Mason to sell its priceless collection of Hemingway books and letters.

Police believed Pacheco and his accomplices weren’t exactly literary types but had been hired under contract. But by whom?

With the arrest, they — and Mason — believed they would soon find out.

But in March 1996, inside the Don Jail, Pacheco hanged himself.

Last week, for the first time, Mason said openly he has never believed Pacheco committed suicide.

He believes he was murdered — “offed” to hide the identity of the person or persons who hired him.

“You can quote me on that,” he says.

Friends working in the prison system told him that prison “suicides” rarely are.

Despite the passage of years, the book dealer’s memory of that morning in 1993 has not dulled. He has replayed the events in his mind again and again like some slow-moving slideshow: his arrival at the shop, the unlocked door, the busted safe with doors akimbo, papers strewn across the room.

A deepening feeling of dread.

“I was in shock,” he recalls.

Within minutes more than 20 cops were on the scene.

There was confusion, and no one really knew the extent of the “take” until customer Jim Yates came in.

“Geez,” he said. “I hope the Hemingway stuff is okay.”

“My partner Debra (Dearlove) and I looked at each other and froze,” Mason recalls. “Then we ran to the safe — and that’s when we knew.”

The stolen collection also contained correspondence from American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The estate of the late Canadian writer Morley Callaghan had hired Mason to sell its priceless collection of Hemingway books and letters.

Mason took quiet possession of them from Callaghan’s son Barry and locked them away.

Only a few people knew of their exact location.

“These kids were clearly hired to do it,” Mason says firmly.

In time he and Dearlove learned that other items had been taken that night: a copy of naturalist John Evelyn’s Silva, annotated by 18th-century poet Thomas Gray, a manuscript and letters of the late American poet Allen Ginsberg, and — of all things — a baseball signed by the 1992 World Series champions, the Blue Jays.

The baseball was later found in the alley.

But nobody breaks in for these things, Mason explains.

The target — the prize — was the package of rare books and letters he had advertised for sale around the world: first editions of Hemingway’s first two books, one a personally inscribed copy to Callaghan, four original Hemingway letters, only one previously published, and more correspondence from Callaghan, Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson and others.

The collection was not just rare. It was historic: the complete, post-fight exchange of the famous writers, squabbling over what had happened in the ring at the American Club in Paris that summer of 1929, and what happened after.

The trouble began on a summer afternoon in Paris when Callaghan caught Hemingway square in the mouth with a punch that left him bleeding.

Fitzgerald was so shocked at seeing his hero and boxing coach Hemingway bloodied that he lost all track of time. A two-minute round had instead gone four. And it was during that overrun that Hemingway was hit hard — and laid out flat on his back.

As Callaghan recalled years later in his memoir That Summer in Paris, Hemingway eventually climbed to his feet and verbally turned on Fitzgerald.

“ ‘All right Scott,’ Ernest said savagely, ‘if you want to see me getting the shit knocked out of me, just say so. Only don’t say you made a mistake,’ and then he stomped off to the shower room to wipe the blood from his mouth.”

Hemingway and Callaghan had met as reporters in the Toronto Star newsroom during a brief overlap in 1923, and they became friends. They had much in common: both were serious about writing, both yearned to become novelists, and they had similar literary tastes.

At their final meeting before Hemingway returned to Paris in January 1924, they strolled up Bay St. and bought a copy of Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, at The Little Shop Round the Corner — today, directly across from Indigo’s flagship Toronto bookstore.

Hemingway signed it, “To Callaghan, With best luck and predictions, Ernest M. Hemingway.” It was his Toronto Star byline. Only later would he drop the “M.”

The little book, with grey blue wrappers, was one of just 300 copies that had been printed in Dijon, France.

It was this copy that was stolen in Toronto in 1993.

Today it’s estimated to be worth about $170,000.

Later, Hemingway urged Callaghan to visit him in Paris, and in 1929 Callaghan did so with his wife, Loretto.

All that summer Callaghan and Hemingway boxed regularly, enjoying beer afterwards.

But a gossip columnist for the Denver Post caught wind of “The Fight,” and soon Hemingway’s knock-down was reported back in America as a “knockout.”

And an entire story was built around it: American papers said Hemingway had disparaged Callaghan’s work and that Callaghan challenged him to a match and then laid him out cold.

But, in fact, Hemingway had always encouraged Callaghan, predicting that he would become a great writer.

When the story hit the New York papers, Callaghan had already returned to Toronto, and Hemingway suspected him of spreading the story.

But instead of contacting Callaghan directly, Hemingway bullied Fitzgerald into cabling Callaghan and demanding a correction.

Callaghan replied sternly to Fitzgerald, pointing out that he was not the source of the story, but he graciously wrote the New York Herald Tribune with a light touch and set the record straight. No, he had not challenged Hemingway nor had he knocked him out, he wrote.

They had sparred regularly in Paris “trying to work up a sweat,” hoping to inspire “an increased eagerness for an extra glass of beer.

“I do wish you’d correct that story,” Callaghan wrote.

But that wasn’t enough for Hemingway.

He wrote two more letters to Callaghan — both of which were part of the stolen package — making it clear that he was still mighty “sore.”

And he wanted a rematch.

In the first letter, written on Jan. 4, 1930, he confirmed that he had bullied Fitzgerald into sending the cable and assumed full responsibility for it, but never apologized.

In fact, Hemingway wrote, “If you wish to transfer to me the epithets you applied to Scott I will be in the States in a few months and am at your disposal.”

Then in an undated, never-before-published follow up, Hemingway threw down the gauntlet.

“I honestly believe that with small gloves I could knock you out inside of about five two-minute rounds,” Hemingway taunted, adding later, “So if you want us to disarm let me know.”

“Astonishing,” Mason says today. “Just astonishing. This is one of the most stunning Hemingway letters, in which he basically tells Callaghan, ‘in an alley, I could clean your clock.’ What kind of a person acts like that? Especially one of the greatest writers in American literature. And he’s acting like a 7-year-old.”

Besides these letters, the stolen package also included an elegant, handwritten Fitzgerald letter to Callaghan, apologizing for having submitted to Hemingway’s demands and sending the accusatory cable.

“Dear Morley,” Fitzgerald wrote on Jan 1, 1930, “I apologize unreservedly for having sent you that stupid and hasty telegram.”

Later he added, “I have never suggested to anyone including Ernest that you possibly had anything to do directly or indirectly as to the rumour.”

Hemingway, whose fame was then soaring, was embarrassed and furious by the transatlantic rumour that he had been knocked out cold, probably fearing that he’d become an object of ridicule.

He obsessed about it for the rest of his life.

In fact, he even tried to get his version out first.

In a letter to Maxwell Perkins, literary agent for both him and Fitzgerald, Hemingway claimed he’d had so much to drink during lunch that he could barely see Callaghan.

“I had a date to box with him at 5 p.m. — lunched with Scott and John Bishop at Pruniers — ate Homard thermidor — all sorts of stuff — drank several bottles of white burgundy. Knew I would be asleep by five . . . I couldn’t see him hardly — had a couple of whiskey’s en route . . . ”

In this letter Hemingway claimed Scott had let the round go not four, but eight minutes.

Then, as late as 1951, Hemingway was still trying to spin his version, telling Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener that Scott had actually let the round go 13 minutes.

And it was no longer white burgundy he’d been drinking. Now it was sancerre.

But the truth is that Morley Callaghan knew how to box and sparred off and on at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto with intercollegiate champion Joe Mahon, a light heavyweight who had won many matches in both Canada and the United States.

“But it was a silly separation over the fight,” says writer-editor Barry Callaghan, son of Morley and proud keeper of his father’s flame.

“Great vanities are sometimes at stake between artists and I think neither one of them was prepared to step up to the plate and say, ‘Look, this happened five years ago, let’s have a drink.’ Neither one of them got over it.”

But the friendship had been real up until that point, he notes.

Morley’s attitude toward Hemingway was consistent, Barry adds.

“It was always one of openness and goodwill.”

David Mason remembers first learning about the Hemingway letters during a discussion with Morley Callaghan at his home in the 1980s.

“He was telling me about the fight and he went off to look for the letters and he came back and he said, ‘Ah, I can’t find them.’

“I said, ‘Do you have any idea what they’re worth?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I guess it’s worth a fair bit.’ And I said, ‘When you find them, the first thing you should do is put them away in a safety-deposit box.’

“He was a gentle old guy,” says Mason.

So gentle, in fact, that he had never allowed the letters to be published as long as Hemingway’s widow was alive.

“He told me he didn’t want to hurt her feelings,” Mason says. “That’s the kind of guy he was.”

Mary Welsh Hemingway, the writer’s fourth wife, died in 1986.

Morley Callaghan died in 1990.

The letters were put up for sale in 1993.

David Meeker, a well-known dealer of Hemingway materials in Sacramento, Calif., estimates the stolen package would only be worth “about $325,000,” today, given that Hemingway letters now generally sell for about $15,000 each.

Hearing this, Mason is unruffled — even amused.

“Content is the basis of value,” he says calmly, and the fact that these letters deal almost exclusively with The Fight makes them priceless. “And this is the complete package — the total value is greater than the sum of the parts.”

Toronto detective Sgt. Jeff Zammit, who arrested suspect Robert Pacheco, remembers just how close police got to solving the case.

He remembers, too, that Pacheco was very afraid of going to jail.

Zammit says he was “shocked” when he got the call that Pacheco had committed suicide.

“That’s how it was reported on the occurrence sheet,” he says, reviewing his notes.

And he tells an interesting story, about a tip.

One day in December 1995, as Pacheco was awaiting trial, Zammit got a call from someone “known” to the police, a career criminal. He asked Zammit for a meeting in an unmarked police car.

He had some information, he said.

The tipster showed up at the appointed time carrying a book and slipped into the vehicle.

The book was a minor one taken from Mason’s shop the night of the theft.

“He handed the book over as a sign of good faith,” Zammit recalls over a coffee. “And then he said, ‘There are people out there who are friends of Rob who still have the items you’re looking for.

“ ‘You’re going to have to dig deeper if you want to find them.’ ”

The case has never been closed.