Dan the Man

Post your true-blue Aussie yarns here.
Post Reply
Neville Briggs
Posts: 6946
Joined: Sun Oct 31, 2010 12:08 pm
Location: Here

Dan the Man

Post by Neville Briggs » Thu Jun 30, 2011 2:56 pm

Some of the old outlaws have made it into the stuff of romance and legend. The life of the modern day outlaws has not been shown to be so endearing.

When I did police work in Sydney many years ago, one of the sleaziest drug pushers on our patch was a person I'll call Dan the Man.

I saw him one day, sitting in a park near the Railway Station, a well known haunt of drug pushers. So I decided to speak to him.
" What are you doing , hanging around here ? "
He protested that he was doing nothing wrong and demanded to know why I was questioning him.
" You're Dan the Man " I said.
" Not me " he said " Don't know him, that's not my name "
I explained to him in a very polite way, that my confidence in identifying him was due, in no small measure, to the fact that he had Dan the Man tattooed on his left forearm.
As Shakespeare said " There's the rub ! "

Dan the Man eventually landed in prison. He got into a bit of trouble over breaking prison rules and came to believe that one of his fellow inmates had informed on him.
The alleged informer was apparently a clumsy sort of chap as he accidentally fell down a flight of stairs in the prison and broke both his legs.

Dan the Man was later released from prison, but didn't last long.
Tragically he was found dead, slumped in the toilet block of the local hotel, a syringe stuck in his arm. It seemed that someone had supplied him with a hit laced with battery acid.
Bad scene.

I might mention one odd thing. The person who went to use the toilet that day and was shocked to discover Dan the Man's body, was this fellow who had to struggle on crutches because he had both legs in plaster.
Neville
" Prose is description, poetry is presence " Les Murray.

Post Reply