Robert Fish - Kek Huuygens, Smuggler

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications for permission to reprint the stories listed:

Argosy for Merry Go Round, Counter Intelligence, and The Hochmann Miniatures.

MD for A Matter of Honor and The Collector.

New American Library for Sweet Music, portions of which appeared in the novel The Hochmann Miniatures.

Playboy for The Wager.

One of the most common questions put to writers at cocktail parties is, Where do you get your ideas? Well, other than rarely getting them at cocktail parties, most writers have no idea where they get their ideas. On a few occasions when they do remember where they got a particular inspiration, it usually stays with them a long time.

It was this way with Kek Huuygens.

I was living in Rio de Janeiro at the time, and enjoying it very much, spending my hours divided about equally between golf and trying to think up workable plots so that my writing could sustain my sport habit, not to mention my family. This one day, after a round at the Gavea Country Club, I was sitting on the veranda with my partner of the day, a man named Les Weldon, sipping a gin tonic, when he turned to me and said sadly, Old So-and-so-died yesterday.

Oh? I asked, vastly disinterested. My mind, at the time, was torn between a scene on the Rio docks I was hoping to use in a book I was hoping to write, and the fact that I had inexplicably developed a shank that day, than which there is no greater curse.

Yes, he said. He was quite a man. Polish, you know, but during the war he went to Holland and took on a Dutch name. Fought with the underground in France and later became an American citizen.

Thats nice, I said. I figured if maybe I turned my right hand over just a trifle and, of course, kept my stupid head down and my stupid eye fixed on the stupid ball, maybe I could control the stupid club-head from turning in my stupid hand, and send the shank back to wherever it came from. The Devils Pro Shop, probably.

Yes, Les said. Now that hes dead I could tell you things about him I couldnt while he was alive, because not everything he did was strictly within the law.

Thats nice, I said. I wondered if possibly one of our opponents that day had gone in for Macumba, which was the local version of Voodoo. Possibly he had had a small figurine of me made, and was opening the tiny hand and turning the miniature club just as I swung. Id have to keep an eye on him the next time we played.

Yes, Les said. There was the time, for example, when he smuggled five million dollars into the United States from Belgium. Legally or anyway, almost legally.

I looked up, frowning, my mind at last drawn from my shank, at least temporarily. You can never forget a shank completely.

What do you mean? I asked. How do you smuggle legally?

I said, or almost legally, Les said reprovingly. Ill tell you about it. And he did.

And Kek Huuygens was born.

Naturally Kek has had many adventures since then, as many as I have been able to dream up, because the original, while quite a man in his own way, unfortunately didnt serve literary requirements other than in his five million dollar caper. Still, I thank him (and Les Weldon, of course) for bringing Kek to life.

Kek has developed, of course, over the years since he was born in Rio de Janeiro. He has become quite a man, taken on a more definite form, fixed his idiosyncracies more firmly, become more of a person. He has experienced more: married and divorced, loved and been loved, hated and been hated. He has traveled a long way from the Warsaw of his youth; he has seen the world.

I have no idea where Kek Huuygens is at the moment; weve sort of lost track, unfortunately. But wherever he is, I know that behind those cool gray eyes that razor-sharp mind is busy, putting the little cogs together in some scheme or other to confound the customs service of one country or another. I am sure, as always, he has some plan he is perfecting, which will bring gain to others, but mostly to himself.

I just wish I knew what it was!

Robert L. Fish

One million dollars...

The man facing me was Kek Huuygens, and he bit his lip as if he had said something slightly nasty; his eyes dropped to stare moodily into his empty glass. It had contained Unterberg and Coca-Cola, a sickening combination he had ordered with the disclaimer that it was good for his stomach. He looked as if some solid food would have been much better. Until I ran into him in the street a few minutes before, I hadnt seen Huuygens for fourteen years not since 1944 but he hadnt changed. And in the old days, Kek Huuygens had always been good for copy. So I merely forced a deprecating laugh.

One thousand dollars? I said it with just the proper amount of disbelief he would have expected. I didnt think that Kek Huuygens ever bothered with anything that small.

Not one thousand, he said quietly. His eyes treated me with the scorn my subterfuge merited. One million. His finger tapped idly against the side of his glass with just the hint of apology; even in his present shabby state there was no doubt that the man was an artist.

I waved for the waiter. Huuygens acknowledged my hospitality with the faintest of nods.

The waiter came and replenished our glasses. Huuygens watched the pouring of his drink with almost clinical detachment, but once the waiter had turned his back, he drank deeply, eagerly, and then wiped his lips. He saw my look and smiled bitterly.

Gaudy, but not neat, eh? he said. Not the man you used to know? Well, Im not the man you used to know.

I didnt say a word. He studied me a moment in silence and then sighed. Im not even the man I used to know, he said with soft regret, and added quietly, qualifyingly, not within a million miles.

I sipped my drink.

It all started in Brussels (Huuygens said after a pause, eyeing me with mild hatred for having placed him in my debt for the paltry sum of two drinks). The idea sprang into my head full-grown, out of nowhere. A brilliant, fantastic idea, and simple as all great ideas are simple. Ideas have been my ruin... In any event, I had come to Brussels on a sort of vacation. Elsa, my wife and Im sure you remember her wanted to visit her mother in Maastricht and also do some shopping, and I had at that time a little money and no particular reason not to bring her.

This particular day, I was free of Elsa and having lunch with a friend of mine or at least, he was a friend at the time. Friends are cheap when one can buy ones own drinks... In any event, I was having lunch with this man and our conversation fell into the standard pattern of all luncheon conversations in those days. This was directly following the war, you understand, and restaurant talk in Europe followed the certain ritual of a tribal dance where each partner knows the steps of the other. We began by discussing the Belgian franc, moved almost with rhythm to the solidity of the Swiss currency this coincided with the fish course and came to the English pound-sterling with the trifle.

You must remember those days; you were with the Tribune in Paris then, as I recall. If you saw a man and a woman walking together, arms locked about one anothers waists, heads bent to touch in closest intimacy, you could be sure they were not talking about love. They were talking about foreign exchange, or documents, or passports, or permits, or but I am getting away from my subject.