Not too long after the encounter at Mecca, I went looking for Julian Thomas, only to find that suddenly the number on the phone no longer worked, and the address that it had formerly been attached to was now just a vacant warehouse. Some slightly illegal poking around revealed signs that someone had lived here recently. There were faded patches on the walls where pictures had hung, and a strange amount of scarring on a lot of the walls and floors, slashes, it seemed to me.

Not finding much of interest, I tried to dismiss the whole thing, put it out of my head as nothing more than a flight of fancy, and went home to make love to my beautiful girlfriend. When I walked out the door, who should I find but the mystery man himself.

"You're a curious one, aren't you Mr. Parker?"

He was facing me, and I recognized his voice, but his face was hidden by the shadows.

"Maybe I am. You leave a guy with a lot to be curious about."

I could see a glint of light reflected off his pearly-white teeth as he smiled, ferally.

"Careful, Parker, you might give me the wrong impression. I'd suggest that you leave well enough alone for the time being. You aren't yet ready for the things you might find."

I'd had enough.

"Okay, look, I've had enough." So, no one ever said I was the most creative guy on the face of the Earth. "This Batman, mystery man, whatever- man kinda shtick may go over great with the ladies, or the guys for that matter, I don't care, but I'm tired of getting jerked around by you. Unless you cough up some answers right now."

"Duck!"

"What?"

"Duck!" He shouted again as he leapt almost clean over me, pushing me to my knees as something very shiny, very fast, and very mean looking went whizzing through the place where my head had resided a moment before. When I got up off my knees, Thomas was gone again, vanished into the gloom, leaving no trace.

"Okay, now I'm really confused."

Needless to say, I got the hell out of there as fast as these old sprinter's legs could carry me, and hightailed it home. Something in me told me that I shouldn't share the night's events with Jen, and while I felt guilty about keeping secrets from her, I knew that something big was going on here, and I didn't want to involve her in it until I knew more.

As those thoughts ran through my head, I found myself marveling at the absurdity of it all. Here I was, the definition of a yuppie, a young guy living in the city paying the rent with a pretty standard desk job. Yeah, I was a yuppie all right. And what, I asked myself, do I think I'm doing going off and sneaking through dark alleys, talking with crazy men and getting sharp objects thrown at my head?

Still, for all that, I could feel that whatever was going on, it was important, and the fact that Thomas had approached me before all of this started said to me that I was meant to be involved in some way. But first, I had to find him.

The next morning was a Saturday, so I found my way to the library on the university campus. Having freshly matriculated, I knew my way around there better than I did any other library, though I did have to bribe the attendant at the door to let me in. Well, what's a six pack between friends, right?

At first, I couldn't find much of anything. Thomas seemed to be almost invisible, except for some references to him in a couple economic journals. Apparently he held a controlling interest in a major conglomerate, but only rarely appeared and then only for very short periods of time. Unfortunately for me, this raised more questions than it answered. What was a business magnate with billions kicking around in his bank account doing slumming at a bar like the Mecca more than once and, more importantly, why was he interested in me?

Thomas' company, Thames River Holdings, had no real information listed on its powerful owner, not even a picture. I found a couple of articles by business students at various universities who threw around wild speculations about Thomas, ranging from involvement in the international drug trade to the Illuminati, to vampirism, none of which seemed very likely to me. Although, given a bit more thought, he did have some pretty funky habits; wandering through dark alleys, disappearing into shadows. For all I knew he could be Vlad the Impaler himself, hanging around just to screw with my head. Possible, but not likely.

After five hours, I was pretty exhausted and noticed when I walked outside that I had several missed calls from an unidentified number. When I checked the voicemail, I was only half surprised to hear the voice of Julian Thomas on the other end.

"I must be brief. Meet me at the Ninth Street Bridge at six pm today, and don't be late. Be there if you want to live." And then he had hung up.

This was getting a little too James Bond for my tastes, but the "if you want to live" comment had definitely got my attention. So, with more than a little anticipation, I decided that I would, indeed, meet Julian Thomas on the Ninth Street Bridge, and I sure hoped he kept his word.