21 Jump Street (Tom Hanson)

Fear and Loathing with Russell Buckins

"No, don't you?" Doug asked.

"That's what we are trying to figure out," I informed him.

"Well, we checked his house. We phoned Amy and his mom. And nobody knows where he is," Judy revealed.

Amy is Tom's girlfriend. I met her recently when Tom brought her to a team dinner a few weeks ago. I don't know how they met. She's really sweet, but I've never been with her one-on-one. Fuller actually thought that she was my sister when she came by to give Tom lunch one day, but I think that's just because our hair is a bit similar. Hers is a little more more frizzy than mine though.

"Yeah," Ioki said, "he better show up. IAD's climbing all over Fuller. Besides, he got to testify in the prelim in the morning. He could get canned for this."

"Hanson? Canned?" Doug asked. "He never done anything wrong in his life. He doesn't even know anybody who's done anything wrong in his life, except for me." Doug suddenly stopped and a look of enlightenment waved across his face.

"What?" Judy asked.

"Russel Buckins," Doug said.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"A low life. One of Tom's childhood best friends," Doug said.

Doug told us about how he met the guy, and why he thinks that Buckins influenced Tom to skip town with him. He also told us about a little speech he gave Tom about rebelling, and he felt partly to blame for this predicament.

_______________________________

We had decided to separate in order to try to locate Hanson faster. I wrote a list of every place I've ever run into him after work hours, and every place I could think of that he liked to go to that were not in town. Judy was calling every hotel in the area, and Ioki was going to the court case that Tom needed to be at in order to charge a murderer.

I even went to his apartment to see if he was there. The lights were off, I couldn't hear anything and he didn't come to the door when I was banging my fist against the wood. One of his neighbors poked his head out though, so I smiled at him uncomfortably and left.

After taking what Doug told us into consideration, I found out that Tom was thinking about attending a wedding of a high school friend a few hours away. At first, I didn't believe that he could be that irresponsible and blow off work to go. However, it was not so impossible anymore. I groaned and got the directions to the venue and drove off.

I got a little over halfway there when it already fell dark. In December, it gets dark early in the evening. I drove through a little town off the freeway and saw a restaurant sign for a sandwich shop. I was starving, and I do not have the gas money to be driving around aimlessly. I pulled into a parking spot and started walking past a strip of buildings to reach the sandwich place. I froze in my tracks when I passed a bar and I heard someone call out, "60 seconds against the bear!"

I quickly turned around and walked back to the open entrance and peered into the bar. There was a giant yellow sign that read "Wrestle Sheila! Stay in the ring for only one minute and win $500.00"

There was a wrestling ring with an eight foot tall brown bear standing in the middle with a chain around her neck. People were hooting and hollering at this bear, causing a ruckus. I was absolutely entranced, and if it wasn't for being on the clock and underage, I would have loved to see an idiot go up against her for a measly $500.

The bouncer at the entrance of the bar cleared his throat and asked if I was coming in. He wore a tight black shirt and crossed his beefy arms. The sounds of balls banging together while the customers were playing pool danced out of the bar, and the bright neon signs burned my eyes.