Two Passions Read online

those girls, but anybody going through what he must tonight, it makes me cold to the bone.” A thought seemed to strike him then. “Why, you … then you must be…

  What’s this? Does he know now? How can he? Be careful. “I must be …

  “… the priest who’s seeing Masserman before his execution?”

  Now the whole story he must tell was falling into place just right. “Yeah, that’s it, Mr. Cagel,” he said. “I just come from hearing the poor bastard’s confession.” He had neither heard nor given any confession, but he needed it for the pitch he was about to make.

  It struck him that his diction stunk, for a priest, but Cagel didn’t seem to notice that. Instead, Cagel looked so grim that it seemed possible he thought Masserman’s confession might have pointed one of several fingers at himself. “Those confessions, that’s something you can’t talk about, right?”

  “Sure that’s right. But along of the confession, he told me that you owed him a hunk of cash?”

  “Well.” Cagel hesitated. “And then?”

  “He thought if you was to repay it, like through me, I could get it to some kind of good works’ people? Sort of paying for his sins, you see?”

  Cagel was silent a moment, thinking. “Sounds like your visit must have done some good, Father. All right, I’ll see the money goes to something decent.”

  “Masserman thought I might tackle it myself.”

  Cagel shook his head. “Sorry, Father. Can’t do it that way. But I’ll take care of it.”

  Rage began to rise in him. Damn him, that’s my money. But in the very beginning of clenching his fists he felt the weakness of his hands, and was aware — with a shock — that in his present body, even Cagel could take him out. That thought was almost unbearable, but he managed to choke down his bile.

  Anyway that was that. He knew Cagel wouldn’t pay some stray priest the money he owed Masserman (or use it for charity either, for that matter.)

  He would have to hole up with Patsy – no! A strange priest couldn’t just walk in on Patsy, either, and claim he was Masserman. He finally realized that all his old contacts were useless to him now. There were serious disadvantages to being someone else. Not enough to outweigh the basic advantage of continuing to breathe, though.

  Then he remembered again, and could have laughed out loud. He didn’t have to hole up, anyway. No escapee had ever been better disguised than he. They would never even know he had escaped.

  And when the priest did talk . . . and he was sure to think better of this trading of souls real quick. . . there was no way they’d believe him! Desperate men on Death Row would claim anything to get out of dying, he knew.., and it never did them any good.

  The priest was trying to get completely straight about his motivations for making that very strange offer to change places with the murderer. He had felt real pity for Masserman, he knew, but he had to admit that he had also felt an extreme irritation with the doomed man’s blind rude stubbornness. He had felt a sudden urge for self-sacrifice, but surely it had been mixed with a feeling of spiritual superiority, of a pride no mere sinful man had a right to feel. And he wasn’t sure he had been thinking at that moment about God at all, but about how righteous he himself was.

  No, taken together it didn’t make that good a picture. God seems to have called my bluff and I have no reason to believe that I can beg out of this now. Anyway, whether He plans to keep this going or not, I’ll have to see it through as He chooses. It’s a lot harder than I thought to say ‘Thy will be done.”

  He no longer felt a vague confusion when he reached the barred window in four paces instead of five. He was getting used to having longer legs. He didn’t know if he would ever get used to carrying Masserman’s additional weight. Well, he probably wouldn’t have time for that.

  There was one advantage to this new body. He felt . . . or this body felt . . . healthier, more vigorous than his own had. On the other hand, this was the body that was going to receive a lethal injection in the morning.

  As he paced, a massive humped shadow slouched over the floor and the cot and up the wall. It didn’t look like his. It wasn’t, he had to remind himself, it was Masserman’s.

  He recalled a weird Hindu story from his youthful days of spiritual seeking, before his conversion, his calling, and the seminary, about a wayfarer who is stranded in a dark forest at night. Two ghouls appear bearing a fresh corpse for their consumption. Spotting the traveler, one ghoul decides to try fresh meat, and rips a leg right off the terrified man. But the other ghoul, taking pity, attaches a leg from the corpse in place of the missing one. This continues, the first ghoul tearing away in succession every limb, each quarter of the body, and the head, the second ghoul replacing it all from the corpse. At last, tiring of their fun, the two depart, leaving the original traveler’s scattered limbs on the ground, and one very confused man. He wanders off to find a priest who can tell him just who he is.

  But in his case, the priest surely didn’t know. He himself was the priest. Wasn’t he? And he was growing aware of an internal feeling which, under the circumstances, panicked him more than anything yet. He had a huge, a nearly overpowering craving for beer. And he’d never even drunk beer; he’d been allergic to alcohol all his life.

  After leaving Cagel’s place, he walked the streets aimlessly for a time. His body (whoever’s body) felt too light, he tired too quickly, his strides weren’t long enough, he wasn’t taller than anybody else — there was a lot of adjusting ahead of him, he could see that already. Twice he saw people he knew a bit, and realized they didn’t know him. And once he received a friendly wave from a woman he’d never seen before. It all got on his nerves, not knowing how to act.

  His thoughts were interrupted when he found himself climbing the steps of a brownstone apartment building he didn’t recognize. He turned to descend again, and then was struck by a sudden thought. He examined the names under the mail slots, and grinned wryly. Peter Cassidy, Apt. F4.

  The priest must have lived in these digs for some time. His body, knowing the way by habit, had carried itself home. He dug through his coat pocket, and found a circlet of wooden beads attached to a small cross. He stuffed those back in irritation. From another pocket he pulled out a key ring. Feeling conspicuous, he had to try several keys before he got inside.

  Cassidy’s rooms were almost as bare and unpleasant as the recent cell had been. One uncomfortable chair, a bed harder than the cell cot, shelves of dumb books about history or God. He started to sneer at the sight of a crucifix on the bedroom wall, but somehow his lip didn’t want to curl. He wondered if some sort of payback might not yet be demanded of him. Still, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d escaped.

  He went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. As he might have expected, no beer. Fruit juice and piss like that.

  He’d have to organize this guy’s life a little more to his own taste. Not so fast that it would be conspicuous, though. He wished he knew how many people were close to Cassidy, whether he could fool them long enough to cash in all the priest’s stuff, and start over again somewhere else. Not as a priest, he was damned sure of that.

  He’d better go through Cassidy’s mail and papers, and get some idea of the guy’s life and friends. He didn’t want to make some suspicious mistake, fail to recognize Cassidy’s girl friend or someone. Not that a priest was supposed to be making it with a woman, but he’d never believed that they were really above all that. Whatever sissy dress they wear on the job, they’re still male, aren’t they?

  And at a sudden really frightful thought, he unzipped and checked himself out. He was still male, actually not that much different from before. That would have been a hell of a note!

  Still, the more he thought about it, the more relieved he felt. He could make any damn mistake at all; no one could ever find him out. He was in another man’s body, with another man’s fingerprints, even; Masserman’s sentenced body would soon be dead as Kennedy’s. People who knew Cassidy might think the priest w
as acting nuts, but in a million years they could never think him to be who he really was.

  Even better, he thought, sinking onto the hard chair. If they did know, there’s nothing on earth they could do about it. They can’t arrest or kill this body for anything my old one did. There’s no fucking precedent.

  And they’d have to explain just who it was they executed as me. They’d have to admit they were murderers. He found that very funny.

  He ransacked the shelves and found a checkbook in plain sight. Cassidy had some money in the bank, anyway, enough to start with until he got settled in somewhere. He’d start by withdrawing.--.wait a minute!

  He threw the checkbook across the room with a curse. He couldn’t even sign the things! It was his damned money, and he wouldn’t be able to get at it.

  Then a new thought. He retrieved the checks, took a pen from the priest’s pocket, and wrote ‘Peter Cassidy’ on the back of a stub. He compared the writing to that on the priest’s driver’s license. The two signatures weren’t anything like each other.

  He thought a bit and then tried again. Deliberately he thought of something else, where there would be a liquor store around this part of town, not that he wanted any just now, while signing the priest’s name again. Comparing the signatures, he felt a slow grin spread over his