Characters from then 3 – column

After almost 30 years I was face to face with Voske again. That sounds like a childhood sweetheart. Something for Yvon or Anita. But isn't it.

Voske and I once met on a Shovelhead parts hunt. He turned out to be causing a furore with his purchasing policy, I heard later. He watched at night. And came back at night. We became friends. A kind of. But I never did business with him. You could also become enemies with Voske. In that case he switched with amazing agility of mind to violence as a method of communication. Say the Terminator with a hangover on a bad Monday.

There was also something about a hijacked ambulance and an officer who was thrown into the Singel. And something with benefits agencies. And Spanish real estate. Busy busy busy…

The penultimate time I saw Voske he came by late at night on his tuned Yamaha V-Max. He no longer rode a Harley himself. Harleys broke down if you blew them full throttle to Spain. He had to go directly to Barcelona that evening. So needed my two twenty liter jerry cans. We went to stuff things and he strapped them to his monster bike with little respect for gravity. After another quick lager for the road and two pints in his pockets, he drew a short rubber line for the door and was off.

Now he was back. Completely unexpected. Still shaven, with the build of a prize bull and the jovial air of a well-fed pit bull. In a Porsche with Spanish plates. He had become a full-time Spaniard and was still in free trade. But no longer in the Netherlands. Due to some irritations. While he had been so clear. At the time, in a still famous problem area in Utrecht, he had some garage boxes in which his trade was stored. He then took care of Harleys that had lost their daddy.

The orphaned Harleys were lovingly disassembled and the parts only went to the purest of enthusiasts. Fox's friends. He had many friends. The boys who made that neighborhood unsafe at the time? He had a deal with that. Voske had told the local junior robber chiefs that he would give them 500 guilders a month if they wanted to make sure his garages weren't broken into. The deal also included that he would shoot whoever failed.

That had only happened once. But then he had to go to Spain - while retaining an impressive number of benefits. And there he had stayed. He was settled. Photos of a blonde for which an average man would not need a marriage certificate but a gun license. Two kids with the same pirate look in their eyes as Paps. There was no ambiguity about the paternity question.

Voske was fine. He sold apartments. To the Dutch, and he was back for a while now. So he also stopped by to return my jerry cans. Plus a bottle of whiskey with a year of birth close to mine. It was getting late. Voske had become wiser. He didn't get into the Porsche with half a bottle in his mouth. He continued to sleep. And the jerry cans have been returned full. You have something for old friends.