Caroline Morrisey. She was bad news in the neighborhood. Listen, whenever someone tells you they’re just minding their own business, you can bet they’ve got a finger in yours. And watch out for anything that claims to be for your own good, because most of the time, it ain’t.

When I saw Caroline Morrisey walking toward me on Blevins Street, her heels clacking on the pavement with rhythmic ferocity and her arms held stiffly against her severely tailored and expensive suit as if she were on her way to bawl someone out, I came this close to ducking into Stinky’s Pool Hall. Stinky’s is a good place to duck into if you’re not too picky about the smell. They don’t call it Stinky’s for nothing. "Place smells like a shit cigar," Owen Carson from over on Doolittle Street once observed. He was being polite.

But fortunately she did not see me. Her eyes were narrowed and focused on some other poor person in need of the salvation of her charitable instincts. I breathed a sigh of relief as she swept past me with determination in every clipped stride. Even do-gooder organizations like the Little Sisters of the Street steered clear of her, figuring that it was just too hard to do good when she was around making everybody feel bad.

Not that I couldn’t use a little do-gooding from someone. I was down to my last fiver and the choice between a cheeseburger at the diner or a hot tip on a horse out at the track was a tough one. I listened to my stomach rumbling. The cheeseburger won.

I was usually kept in pocket money by running a few little errands for Jimmy Ears, nothing dangerous, just pick up and delivery, that sorta thing. But things had dried up a bit in the last coupla weeks, what with the Police Commissioner feeling the heat from some citizens’ group and all the players laying low for a bit. I checked in at Nardi’s Lounge every morning to see if there was anything going on, but Jimmy just shook his head to let me know there wasn’t.

If things kept up, I was gonna have to ask my girlfriend, Tiffany, for a loan, something I definitely did not want to do. Tiff worked over at the City Hall, in the Records department. She wasn’t the brightest kid on the block, but she more than made up for it in other ways, looks for example. Well, okay, personality, then.

Anyway, I was finishing the last bit of cheeseburger at the diner when Lisa, the girl they got working the counter there, came over with a pot of decaf and slopped some of it in my cup. "Don’t look now, Vincent, but there’s a guy over by the door who’s been staring at you like you was handsome or something." She laughed at her own joke, spilled a little more coffee and sashayed away, her skinny rump poking at the outlines of her black taffeta skirt. She was an ugly kid, pretty much like most the kids I saw around town, you know, dyed black hair, dark lipstick, a nose ring or two. I’m telling you, the kids just get uglier every year.

Anyway, I looked at this guy and sure enough, he was staring at me. But it was that weird kinda stare that you see on the insane, you know? He looked at me and through me at the same time, like I was there and I wasn’t there. It was disturbing, even on a full stomach.

I paid my check with the fiver, allowing Lisa an eighty-cent tip, and walked over to him. He kept on looking.

"You lookin’ at me?" I asked. I had on my best tough-guy voice, the Vincent Caparelli special, designed to get attention and respect from the neighborhood lowlifes. I stood in front of him, too close to be polite, and folded my arms. I waited for an answer.

He seemed to focus his eyes a little better. "Are you Vincent?" he asked. His voice was soft and educated. He was not from the neighborhood.

I unfolded my arms and stepped back a little. He didn’t sound like a crazy or anything. I nodded. "Yeah," I said.

"Please sit down, Vincent," he invited. "I have a little proposition that might interest you. And I think you have time to hear, am I right?"

I looked around. Lisa had disappeared into the kitchen and the place was empty except for me and him. I slid into the booth across from him. I had nothing but time.

He put his hand across the table to me. "I am Alan Sable," he said. I shook his hand briefly, but his name meant nothing to me. It didn’t sound like any of the neighborhood names. "I have been watching you for some time. In fact, have been watching your whole world, uh, neighborhood," he continued. He paused for a moment, like he was waiting for me to say something.

"Anyway, Vincent, I think you might be just the man for a little job I have." He looked at me in that funny way again.

A little job sounded good. I now had exactly zero money and sooner or later it would be time to eat again, never mind paying old Mrs. Wasco her rent money when the first rolled around again, as it always did. Why is it always the first when you don’t have a cent?

"Uh, what’s the job?" I asked. I mighta needed a few bucks, but I was still pretty picky about what I would do for it. It was one thing to run a coupla packages around for Jimmy Ears, but if this guy wanted me to do something really dangerous, well, Tiffany had already laid down the law about that to me.

"It’s really very simple," he said. "I just need you to deliver something for me, a small package."

"What is it," I asked, "dope?" I didn’t mind delivering medicine to folks who paid for it, but I wasn’t into delivering wholesale quantities, on account of the penalties.

Alan Sable shook his head and smiled at me. "No, Vincent, it’s not dope. It’s nothing like that. It’s perfectly harmless."

"Well, if it’s so harmless," I said, "how come you can’t do it yourself?"

"I don’t want to," he replied. "Look, I just need you to deliver something to a lady named Caroline Morrisey, you know her?"

"The do-gooder? Who doesn’t?" Practically everyone I knew had been the recipient of her attention, not that any of them had wanted it.

Mr. Alan Sable took out a small package from his jacket and set it on the table between us. It was about the size of a ring box, I know this on account of Tiff and me lookin’ at rings until I am sick of it. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with a little bit of twine and looked like a tiny parcel ready for mailing. "This is for her," he said.

"What is it?" I asked. If it was a ring, this guy should be delivering it himself. Women liked that personal touch. I picked it up - it was very light, the way a ring would feel. I shook it, but nothing rattled. "You should oughta give a ring to a lady in person," I told him, in case he wasn’t wise to this bit of information.

He smiled at me, a big golden smile that somehow made me feel good, too. I grinned back at him like an idiot. "It isn’t a ring, Vincent," he said, "it’s a little more important than that. But I can’t really give it to her myself. You see, she might recognize me and I don't want her to know I’m, uh, in town."

Heck, he didn’t have to explain. I’d be glad to do it. I’d be glad to do anything. That smile of his sure had some effect on me.

"I’ll pay you, uh," he looked in a little book he had taken out of his pocket, "I’ll pay you six hundred dollars."

My eyes got big and my mouth dropped open. What could be important enough for that kind of cash?

Mr. Sable looked confused. "Oh, dear," he said, "maybe I didn’t get that right." He looked in the little book again.

"No, no," I said quickly, "it’s all right. I’ll do it." How hard could it be? I find the pinch-faced old broad, give her the box and get the money. Then Tiff and I don’t have to worry for a while. I grabbed the little box.

"Okay," Mr. Sable said. "Here’s half and I’ll give you the other half when you deliver the goods. You can find me here," he said before I could ask any more questions. He counted out three hundred dollars in twenties and fanned them on the counter. I scooped them up, thanked him, and was halfway out the door when he called to me.

"Mr. Caparelli! Just remember not to open the box, okay?"

I nodded, slipped it into my pocket and went out in search of Caroline Morrisey. The sooner I got it delivered, the sooner I’d get the money.

I looked up and down Elm Street. It used to be a pretty nice place, back when I was a kid. I used to live up the block, over near Blevins Street, with my Ma and my sister Tina back when Jimmy Ears’ dad was on the City Council. His dad was sweet on my Ma for a while, that’s how I come to work for Jimmy now and then, but Jimmy’s dad was sweet on all the women in town. Anyway, nothing ever came of it and when Tina moved to California and got married, she sent for Ma. Tina never did become a movie star like she wanted, but she got a nice house in Encino and three kids and gets enough child support so she doesn’t have to work or anything. Ma had it pretty good in a retirement home, but she died a coupla years ago. Anyway, things change.

The neighborhood ain’t what it used to be, that’s for sure. The place is pretty rundown now, and the old house I lived in as a kid has been cut up into about a dozen apartments. I figured that was as good a place as any to search for Caroline Morrisey. There was plenty of do-gooding to be done there, what with all them immigrant families living fourteen to the dozen in one room.

I hit the jackpot on the first try. Caroline Morrisey was in the middle of explaining in a loud voice to some dark-haired girl about how her baby would be better off at Social Services and how she was gonna come back later and take the kid. When the girl understood, she gave out a loud, helpless wail and stood there in the hallway crying her eyes out. Morrisey had that smug, I-know-better-than-you look on her face and a little kid about three years old just hung on to the girl’s skirt and looked at me with them big brown eyes.

What is it makes us do stupid things? I forgot about the little box in my pocket and whole reason I was there in the narrow dark hallway that smelled like spicy food and diapers. "I don’t think you wanna be botherin’ these people," I said loudly. I folded my arms and stood there, blocking The Morrisey’s way. She turned her blank eyes and prim little smile on me and for a split second I felt really weird, you know, like I had interrupted something really scary, not just Morrisey making trouble for folks.

"Mr. Caparelli," she said in her cool, controlled voice. "What brings you here? This isn’t your home anymore."

I shivered with a sudden case of the willies.

She was right, but that’s what made it so spooky. I mean, anybody could know my name, but only someone from the old days would remember that Tina and Ma and me used to live right there in that very building.

And Caroline Morrisey was new in the neighborhood. She had only been making trouble for a couple of months. I didn’t know where she came from - no one seemed to know about that - she just sorta dropped into the neighborhood one day and started doing stuff.

At first, it was little stuff, like making Stinky sweep up in front of the pool hall and having the cops bust it up when Mr. Delancy hit Mrs. Delancy. Those were okay things to do, and no one paid much attention. But then she started to get, well, worse about it.

Like when Owen Carson parked his old Packard out in front of Stinky’s and she had it towed. It cost Owen a bunch of money to get it out of the City Impound Lot, especially when you consider that he had to have all the stuff that was wrong with it fixed, and there was a lot wrong with it.

Okay, maybe that was so bad, either. But the next thing she did was close down Warren Ettinger’s tobacco shop on account of his fourteen-year-old daughter worked behind the counter after school. His wife died a coupla years ago and the kid didn’t want to go home to an empty house. Besides, Warren could use the help. They weren’t hurtin’ nothing. So Warren had to pay a fine and now his daughter has to go to some after-school activity on the other side of town, only it ain’t safe for a kid her age to be ridin’ the busses that far by herself.

I guess even that wasn’t so bad. But then Caroline Morrisey took it into her head that Fanny Martinez down at the diner had too many kids and wouldn’t it be great if they was all put into foster homes. Fanny had quite a few kids, but she worked hard and they all had food on the table and shoes on their feet. Their various daddies sometimes blew in and dropped a few bucks around, too. I agree that it was not an ideal situation, but it was Fanny’s business.

The Social Services people came and took the kids away and Fanny was so upset that she swallowed some kinda cleaning stuff and has been down at County in a coma ever since. That’s how we got the new kid, Lisa at the diner.

Now that was a bad thing for The Morrisey to do, and it wasn’t any of her business, either. People started to get a little upset with her after that. And when Bud, the old guy who used to sit outside the barber shop and ask politely for spare change disappeared, why, everyone just naturally thought it was Caroline on her clean-up-the-neighborhood kick and a couple of folks started talking about how she should just leave our neighborhood and go work on some other place that really needed it. Owen Carson suggested that if she went to Hell like he wanted, she’d have plenty to do. He was still mad about his car.

So Caroline Morrisey knowing any more about me than I wanted her too was scary. She looked at me long and hard, and her eyes seemed to change color, turning from green to no color at all and back again. The girl with the baby and the little kid took that opportunity to duck back into their apartment and close the door.

"I think," she said sweetly, "that you may need some help, too, Vincent. But I have more pressing matters to attend right now." She turned around quickly and click-clacked her way down the hall and out of the building before I could say anything.

I knocked on the girl’s apartment and she opened the door a tiny bit. "It’s okay," I said to her. "I wont let her do anything to you." I don’t know how much the girl understood, but she smiled at me and then closed the door. I looked around. Back when me and Ma and Tina lived there, that was Ma’s room.

I was halfway down the block when I remembered the little package.

I looked all around for Caroline Morrisey, but I didn’t see her. I walked slowly toward City Hall, feeling like an idiot. I coulda had the rest of the money. But I thought about the three hundred in my wallet and brightened up. Maybe Tiff would want to go out for lunch.

Tiffany sat across from me at the court house coffee shop. She only had half an hour for lunch, so we couldn’t go too far. She ate her chicken salad sandwich daintily while I had a chili dog with all the fixings.

"So, Vin honey, tell me how you got the money?" Every sentence with Tiff had a little rise to it, making it sound like a question even if it wasn’t.

I told her about the guy at the diner, then I told her about seeing Caroline Morrisey at the old place where I used to live.

"An’ you like forgot to give it to her?" she asked. I nodded. "So you’ll find her this afternoon?" I nodded again. She seemed satisfied. She finished her sandwich and put on some fresh lipstick.

"You just be careful, Vinnie," she warned me. "I don’t like that woman." She made a face at me.

"Don’t worry, honey," I said. "I don’t much like her, either." I gave two hundred dollars to Tiffany and she said she’d put it away for us. I kept the rest and decided to hit the track.

It was sunny and warm and the air smelled fresh, like flowers and horses and easy money. I won sixty dollars at the track and only lost about forty, so it was a good afternoon.

When I got back to the neighborhood, it was getting to be late afternoon early evening and Tiffany would be gettin’ off work and expecting to go out to dinner or something, so I figured I better find old lady Morrisey and give her the box so’s I could get the rest of the money. I turned up Blevins Street and walked by Stinky’s. Owen Carson was out front, picking his teeth with the little ivory toothpick that came with his Swiss Army knife.

"How’s the news, Owen?" I asked.

"Nuthin’ much, Vin," he said. "hear you pissed off old Morrisey."

"Yeah," I said, "word must travel fast. You seen her around? I got something for her."

Owen grinned at me. "Yeah, I got something for her too, Vin, but I ain’t seen her lately. You be careful around her. There’s something strange about that woman."

I went back to my old place, where Caroline had threatened the young girl. Sure enough, the Social Services car was out front and I could guess what was going on inside. I went up the steps and into the dark hallway. All the doors were closed, but I found the right one, Ma’s old room, and knocked.

A tall woman from Social Services opened the door. She had a briefcase on a shoulder strap and it was stuffed with papers. The baby was in a basket on a coffee table and the little kid with the big eyes peeked at me from around the corner of a shabby sofa where the young mother sat with her face in her hands. Caroline Morrisey, her prim little smile in place, stood in front of the grimy window and seemed pleased that another little family was breaking up.

I looked up at the ceiling, the same ceiling I had stared at when Ma had rocked me as a baby. It wasn’t right, I thought, it just wasn’t right. But there wasn’t anything I could do, so I got on with business.

"Here," I said, shoving the box toward Caroline Morrisey. It sat in my outstretched palm like a little present.

She frowned at me and picked it up. In her hand, it opened, unfolding first one way, then another until it was too big for her to hold. She dropped it and it kept unfolding, making little clicking noises.

The young mother and the Social Services lady watched, transfixed, as the thing opened further and further until it was the size of a folding chair, all silvery and metallic.

The little kid ran to his mother, hiding behind her to watch the thing as it grew. Then it seemed to stop. It waited, shimmering and gleaming in the dim light.

Caroline Morrisey took a step toward the object. It drew her into it, sucked her in like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner. Once it swallowed her, it folded itself up small again, folding and refolding until it was the size of a ring box again, tiny and tied up tight. The Social Services lady fainted.

I got her a glass of water from the little makeshift kitchen in the corner of the room and took a sip of it myself before sprinkling it over her face. The little boy was grinning and his mother had a small smile on her sad face, too.

"Hey," I said to them both, "Vincent Caparelli said he’d take care of you, didn’t he?" I don’t think they understood the words, ’cause they both laughed. I stuck the little box back into my pocket.

The Social Services lady woke up and I told her she must have fainted or something. "Maybe it’s the ‘flu," I suggested. "It’s going around."

She gathered up her papers and briefcase and I helped her out to her car. She didn’t mention the little mother or the baby. And she definitely didn’t mention Caroline Morrisey.

It was getting late when I went back to the diner. I didn’t want to be too late walking Tiffany home from work or I’d never hear the end of it, but I wanted to collect the rest of the money.

Mr. Sable was there, sitting in exactly the same place. I sat down across from him and pushed the little box toward him. "She’s in there," I said.

He smiled at me and put the box into his pocket. "Good. Sometimes people don’t work right, you know, Vincent?" he said. I nodded. "Sometimes they cause trouble in places that are supposed to just be left alone. I think people in this neighborhood can make enough trouble on their own without the likes of Caroline Morrisey gumming up the works, don’t you?" I nodded again. He counted out the rest of the money and I scooped it into my wallet. I wouldn’t have to run errands for Jimmy for a while, I thought.

"Gee, thanks, Mr. Sable," I said to him. "Let me know if you need anything else delivered. I’d be glad of a job now and then." It was a lot easier than working for Jimmy Ears. More satisfying too, you know what I mean?

He smiled. "My work here is finished, but if I ever need any more, uh, deliveries in this area, I’ll find you."

He left and I ain’t never seen him back in the neighborhood, but things sure got better after that. Business picked up a little with Jimmy Ears and I got my old job back. I won a few bucks at the track and once a week Owen Carson and me shoot a little friendly pool down at Stinky’s. I seen the girl and her kids around and the baby’s walking now. The boy always waves to me.

‘Bout the only disturbing thing about the whole business is that Tiffany’s gettin’ to be a pain about getting married and her mother’s decided to live with us, too. There are times when I wish I had that little box back.

Copyright 1998 Kate Thornton

You can e-mail Kate kittyf@hotmail.com