Paul towers, all gleaming in gentle primary colors, bubble-domed air-cars flitting from tower to tower like glittering hoverflies. That was Future City and somehow Shadow didn’t think it was ever going to be built in Cairo.
The police car cruised past them slowly, then turned, and went back into the city, accelerating down the snowy road.
“Now, why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you,” said Shadow.
“I did it like he said. I did it all like he said, but I gave you the wrong coin. It wasn’t meant to be that coin. That’s for royalty. You see? I shouldn’t even have been able to take it. That’s the coin you’d give to the King of America himself. Not some pissant bastard like you or me. And now I’m in big trouble. Just give me the coin back, man. You’ll never see me again, if you do, I sweartofuckenBran, okay? I swear by the years I spent in the fucken trees.”
“You did it like who said, Sweeney?”
“Grimnir. The dude you call Wednesday. You know who he is? Who he really is?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
There was a panicked look in the Irishman’s crazy blue eyes. “It was nothing bad. Nothing you can—nothing bad. He just told me to be there at that bar and to pick a fight with you. He said he wanted to see what you were made of.”
“He tell you to do anything else?”
Sweeney shivered and twitched; Shadow thought it was the cold for a moment, then knew where he’d seen that shuddering shiver before. In prison: it was a junkie shiver. Sweeney was in withdrawal from something, and Shadow would have been willing to bet it was heroin. A junkie leprechaun? Mad Sweeney pinched off the burning head of his cigarette, dropped it on the ground, put the unfinished yellowing rest of it into his pocket. He rubbed his filthy fingers together, breathed on them to try and rub warmth into them. His voice was a whine now. “Listen, just give me the fucken coin, man. What do you want it for? Huh? Hey, you know there’s more where that came from. I’ll give you another, just as good. Hell, I’ll give you a shitload, man.”
He took off his filthy baseball cap—then, with his right hand, he stroked the air, producing a large golden coin. He dropped it into his cap. And then he took another from a wisp of breath steam, and another, catching and grabbing them from the still morning air until the baseball cap was brimming with them and Sweeney was forced to hold it with both hands.
He extended the baseball cap filled with gold to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Take them, man. Just give me back the coin I gave to you.” Shadow looked down at the cap, wondered how much its contents would be worth.
“Where am I going to spend those coins, Mad Sweeney?” Shadow asked. “Are there a lot of places you can turn your gold into cash?”
He thought the Irishman was going to hit him for a moment, but the moment passed and Mad Sweeney just stood there, holding out his gold-filled cap with both hands like Oliver Twist. And then tears swelled in his blue eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. He took the cap and put it—now empty of everything except a greasy sweatband—back over his thinning scalp. “You gotta, man,” he was saying. “Didn’t I show you how to do it? I showed you how to take coins from the hoard. I showed you where the hoard was. The treasure of the sun. Just give me that first coin back. It didn’t belong to me.”
“I don’t have it any more.”
Mad Sweeney’s tears stopped, and spots of color appeared in his cheeks. “You, you fucken—” he said, and then the words failed him and his mouth opened and closed, soundlessly.
“I’m telling you the truth,” said Shadow. “I’m sorry. If I had it, I’d give it back to you. But I gave it away.”
Sweeney’s filthy hands clamped on Shadow’s shoulders, and the pale blue eyes stared into his. The tears had made streaks in the dirt on Mad Sweeney’s face. “Shit,” he said. Shadow could smell tobacco and stale beer and whiskey-sweat. “You’re telling the truth, you fucker. Gave it away and freely and of your own will. Damn your dark eyes, you gave it a-fucken-way.”
“I’m sorry.” Shadow remembered the whispering thump the coin had made as it landed in Laura’s casket.
“Sorry or not, I’m damned and I’m doomed.” The