The Case of the Drunken Man

The escapade I’m about to describe happened a few years back. I know this because I was driving in the big red car (Toyota Yaris, since you ask) with Daisy May. I can’t give real names and serial numbers but Daisy May’s my daughter, now 28 and sharp as a whistle. I’d picked her up from swim squad at Ithaca Pool, and she can’t have been aged more than 10 on the night in question. She’d done close to 3000 laps that night and smelled like she’d been given the once over by a trauma cleaner with 10 buckets of White King, so we had the car windows open to clean out her lungs and other organs.

As we drove down a steep, dark street near Mean Streets headquarters, we spotted a man lying under a streetlamp on what City Council comically likes to call a footpath. Me, I call it a death trap of dirt and weeds and clay shale that’ll break your ankle quicker than you can say RBH Emergency. But I digress.

The guy lying on the nature strip under the streetlamp was goin’ nowhere. Concerned for his state of health, we pulled up alongside him. He looked like he’d inhaled a hanky full of chloroform. He was out for the count and coulda been dead for all I knew. There seemed to be a party going on somewhere nearby, so I was hoping he’d just stumbled out from barbecue central with a skinful of amber liquid on board. I weighed up the situation and told Daisy May to stay put and lock the car doors. I climbed outta the car and approached the potential corpse, leaving myself a few feet of exit strategy.

‘Hey, fella, you okay?’ I prompted, knowing full well he was a long way down the okay scale.

A groan emerged from him like a creaky door on the Deadly Earnest show, and it smelled like the floor of the Normanby pub.

‘Where have you come from?’ I asked him – a question I’d also posed to the mutt in the Case of the Three-Legged Dog.

The chlorine fumes were wafting over from the open car window where Daisy May sat goggle-eyed, and they seemed to have a restorative effect on the pickled victim. He opened his eyes and took in the view.

‘Have you come from the house over there?’ I asked, indicating barbecue central.

‘Nah, I bin the city. Had too meddy beer. Caught the bus home. Bit crook.’ That was an understatement. I knew if I left him there alone, he might follow the great rock ‘n roll tradition of choking on his own vomit. But I had Daisy May to think of, and I didn’t like my chances of getting him vertical without some help. 

‘Where do you live?’ Once again, it was me asking the questions. Pickled guy couldn’t form a question if you gave him a magnetic fridge poetry kit and Tracy Grimshaw as an assistant.

‘Bosky Terrace. Flats,’ he said. It was broad, but it gave me something to work with.

‘Listen, I’m going to take this kiddo home, then I’m comin’ back for you, buddy. Stay here.’ This last bit of advice was as pointless as a blunt H2B. The only way he was moving was if Brisbane’s ball-bearing schist rolled him to the foot of the hill avalanche-style.

I hopped back in the car with Daisy May and fanged it round the corner to headquarters. As luck would have it, Mr Mean Streets (who I married when I was a giddy young showgirl) was at home. Daisy May and I gave him the lowdown, tandem fashion, on what had taken place at the crime scene. I laid my cards on the table.

‘I say we go back there together. We leave Daisy May here with the doors locked. We pick up this guy and get him home. What happens after that is up to him.’ Mr Mean Streets was doubtful, but when you’re in a tight spot he backs you all the way.

We got in the car, leaving Daisy May to shower off the White King before a chlorine gas explosion wiped out the neighbourhood.

The big red car took the corner on two wheels as we headed back to find the victim. We needn’t have hurried. His face was developing a 3D imprint of Westside gravel, and his drool was bringing drought-relief to the parched soil.

‘Okay wise guy, you’re coming with us,’ I told him. He was in no position to argue. We bundled him into the car like a council-depot flood-prevention sandbag and made our way to Bosky Terrace. There were two contenders for the block of flats he might have lived in. The first one drew a blank from pickled guy. We drove on. The second one generated a short-lived electrical spark in his sozzled brain. We slammed on the brakes and hauled him outta the car.

‘Where’s your key?’ No response.

I banged on a few doors and roused every barking pooch in the area until a neighbour shot out and recognised our victim. He dug out the keys to pickled guy’s flat, and not a minute too soon. Pickled guy was holding in a rumbling reservoir of superfluous food and beverage that no man or woman could hold back. It propelled him into his toilet like a human cannonball at the Ekka. I had to give him credit: his timing and aim were perfect.

I slapped my forehead. ‘How could I be so stoopid? One more minute and my big red car would have been written off as uninhabitable – full of Heinz Chunky Soup and diced carrot!’

Mr Mean Streets nodded. What a chump I’d been. But a lucky chump all the same.

‘Let’s split, dollface, before things get even uglier,’ said Mr Mean Streets. The neighbour waved us off.

We never saw pickled guy again, but I hope he’s out there somewhere. Somewhere in this big city.

Case closed.