21 Jump Street (Tom Hanson)

Fake Perscriptions

March 1990

I walked into the chapel and set my things down on my desk. It was my first day back since everything that has happened, and I was glad that things were starting to feel normal again. Tom was eating peanut butter out of a jar and reading the paper in his chair. He glanced up at me and smiled.

"Oh, you've started stealing my shirts now?" He asked cheekily, fighting his smile.

I glanced down at the shirt I decided to wear today. It was one of his many Harley Davidson shirts that he usually wears when he's Tommy McQuaid. It must have gotten mixed up in my laundry. "You left it at my place, it's mine now."

"I like when when you wear my clothes," he beamed.

Fuller was walking past us so Tom went back to his paper. Before I could greet him, he looked at me and said, "parley, my office, five minutes."

He walked off before I could ask what he meant. He disappeared in his office and I furrowed my eyebrows together in confusion. It was too early for this.

I asked Tom, "what did he say?"

"Parley," he responded without looking up from his paper.

"Parley?" I asked. I had never heard that word in my life.

"It's Pirate code. He wants to meet," Tom revealed.

"Does everyone know Pirate code except for me?" I asked.

He answered, "I understand it, I can't speak it," and then he flipped his page.

"Uh-huh, okay," I said and swiped some papers from my desk that I needed Fuller to sign. I walked into his office and exchanged the papers for the assignment.

"Are you doing okay?" He asked, looking up at me from under his eyebrows as he signed my papers.

"Yeah, I'm good and ready to come back to work."

"Great, I'm gonna have you be going in as a McQuaid."

I was going in as a McQuaid. I knew that if I was a McQuaid, it was going to be some sort of drug deal assignment.

"Hanson!" Fuller called out and soon Tom was in the doorway. "We are having a surge of overdoses on amphetamines and Arpina over at Franklin Roosevelt High School in the Lakeview district. There's also been a doctor named Dr. Harrison who has been writing prescriptions for these amphetamines, which we believe is a student. Tom, I want you to pose as a student buying amphetamines and Mickey, I want you to buy the Arpina." 

"What's Arpina?" I asked, never hearing that name of a drug before.

"Arpina is the name of a new drug over at Franklin. As far as we know, only girls have overdosed on it. We've been finding that only half of these pills in their system can kill them, and there's about 200ml of the drug in each pill."

"Two drugs in the same school?" Tom asked as he peered at his folder. "Smells like it might be connected."

"It could be. But I want you both on this and to shut it down before it reaches other schools. Here, you're gonna need this." He handed us both some money to use for our drug exchanges.

"You can count on us, coach," Tom reassured and we both left his office. We walked down to our cars together and drove off to the school. Tom told me that he started keeping a McQuaid uniform in his car at all times, because he is a McQuaid so often. After my last McQuaid assignment, I started doing the same thing. It made it so much easier.