Novel Detective : Joe Acosta Is a One-Man Force as He Tracks Deadbeat Book Borrowers

On a cloudy, cool Friday in mid-July, a man in a beige sport coat is sleuthing in a dingy Hollywood apartment house.

His name is Joe Acosta and he carries a badge.

Acosta is an investigator for the Los Angeles Public Library. It’s an unglamorous job, tracking down delinquent book borrowers. But . . . with thousands of overdue volumes adrift in the city on any given day, piling up fines and leaving irksome gaps in library collections throughout the 63-branch system, somebody has to do it.

Acosta has done the job for 16 years and still finds it entertaining.

“You’re dealing with the human element,” he explained while trekking through downtown Los Angeles recently in search of yet another truant library patron. The offenders cut a wide swath across Los Angeles society, ranging from professional con artists to movie producers. Searching for them takes Acosta all over the city, from fancy Westside neighborhoods to Skid Row hotels.

“Everybody has a book problem,” he said. “Everybody loves books--especially the expensive ones.”

Acosta is a mild-mannered ex-Marine who will give his age only as “past the 50 marker.” He went to work for the library system after returning from service in Vietnam. His mother did not want him going into law enforcement, which he thought he might do. So when a friend told him about an opening in the city library’s investigations unit, he applied.

The library at one time employed four investigators, library spokesman Robert G. Reagan said, but budget cutbacks have gradually reduced the force to just Acosta.

Consequently, he spends much of his time buried in paperwork at his desk in a Spring Street office building.

Out of 10 million books and other materials that the library system circulates, in any given week an average of 7,000 are listed as overdue. Every week, Acosta mails out up to 1,400 collection notices to people who are at least eight weeks behind in returning library materials. He cancels the cards of the flagrant abusers and investigates those who have at least $800 or $1,000 in fines.

Most of the time, Acosta said, a nudge in the form of a letter or telephone call is all that is needed to retrieve delinquent volumes, videos or audiocassettes.

Some library patrons, however, are not merely forgetful, neglectful or lazy.

This, Acosta said, is where the job gets interesting.

Some book borrowers are downright crooked. Since the Central Library moved to its temporary Spring Street location, an increasing number of his investigations have focused on transients who check out materials and sell them. Periodically, Acosta said, he receives calls from used bookstores reporting that they unknowingly bought a library book.

Audiocassettes are a particularly hot item now, Acosta said. One day this summer he ventured into a seedy Spring Street hotel looking for a patron who had racked up $2,000 in overdue charges on popular recordings. Acosta suspected that the patron might be part of a sophisticated ring that was victimizing the library last year.

“Some individuals have a drug problem,” he said. “They will go into the library and try to rip us off.”

Other errant library users just have a pathological love of books.

Take the couple he was tracking in Hollywood the other day.

According to his records, they have 150 overdue books, most of which deal with serious topics, from a metaphysical treatise called “The Romeo Error” to an expensive pictorial history of the Oglala Sioux. They owe more than $2,000 in fines, according to Acosta’s calculations.

The book detective started the day at the Goldwyn Hollywood branch, where he looked up circulation supervisor Noreen Shaw. She last saw the couple a few months ago and supplied Acosta with a decent description. The man is in his late 50s and has a scraggly mustache. The woman walks with a cane and has “masculine features.”

They are very clever, Shaw added, recalling that the woman was able to evade detection last time by waiting until the branch’s computers broke down before checking out more books.

Shaw said she does not envy Acosta. He has a tough job, looking for people who lead transient lifestyles and often give bogus addresses.

“But Joe keeps right at it. It requires,” she said, “a lot of tenacity.”

Acosta’s next stop was a Vermont Avenue apartment house, the couple’s last known address. He scanned the names on the mailboxes, but did not find that of his quarry. “Hopeless,” he muttered. He questioned the apartment manager, who said he has never heard of the pair but promised to ask other tenants.

The investigator thanked the manager and left his business card. Acosta said he is not giving up. Tips often come in from disgruntled managers of apartments or hotels where the suspects left unpaid bills.

Acosta said that, on most of his rounds, he only flashes his silver badge as a last resort, when a wayward book borrower becomes belligerent. In the past, he said, some investigators encountered such hostility that they were forced to summon police, but Acosta said he has never gotten that close to real danger.

“Courtesy is the best weapon,” he said. When he meets a delinquent library patron, he launches into a spiel that goes something like this: “I’m from the Los Angeles Public Library and I would like to talk to you about some charges here.”

Sometimes people turn over the goods on the spot. Sometimes the materials appear in the library’s night deposit bin a few days later. And sometimes the borrowers try to avoid responsibility, offering excuses along the lines of “the dogs ate it,” or “they were in my car, but the car got stolen.”

It helps to be lucky. In a legendary case several years ago, a break came when Los Angeles police checked out a report of possible foul play. Instead of finding a body inside the apartment, they found endless stacks of library books--about 7,000 in all. The culprit turned out to be a library employee.

Acosta, who was part of the team sent down to help inventory the stash, said the man probably read most of the books.

“We went through a few books and asked him questions about them,” Acosta said. “He knew the answers.”