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party …”
    Jake Madison stopped short, let go of his wife’s arm, and squared up with the panhandler. “I said I don’t have anything for you and asked you to leave us alone.”
    Beside me, Will said, “Uh-oh. You think we should do something about this?”
    “I don’t know what we can do except look for a cop,” I said as I started to do just that. Police officers on foot patrolled the French Quarter, but I didn’t see any of them at the moment. That old bit about there never being a cop around when you need one seemed to be coming true right now.
    But Will was right. I felt a certain responsibility for the Madisons, since they were my clients. If that panhandler got violent, they might be hurt, and I couldn’t just stand by and allow that to happen. I started walking a little faster, my heels clicking rapidly against the sidewalk.
    Things happened before Will and I could get there. Thepanhandler said in an aggrieved tone, “Hey, man, you don’t have to be like that. Remember that ‘there but for the grace of God’ stuff. You could be me, man.”
    “Not in a million years,” Jake said.
    That set the panhandler off. I knew that a lot of them had mental problems or drug addictions and weren’t too stable to begin with, and this one certainly wasn’t. He started cursing and swung a punch at Jake’s head.
    But Jake was too fast for him. He ducked under the blow with what seemed like a casual move, and then as he straightened he drove a fist into the panhandler’s midsection. It was a short, sharp punch that sent the man stumbling backward. He came up against a lamp post, banged his head on it, and then slid down along the post so that he wound up sitting with his back against it, gasping for air. Jake pointed a blunt finger at him and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay right there, boozy.”
    Will and I hurried up to the Madisons, and I asked, “Are you folks all right?”
    Jake grunted. “I’m fine,” he said as if he didn’t think he’d been in any danger at all. He turned to his wife. “How about you, Callie?”
    “I’m fine, too,” she said, but her voice was tight with anger. She glared at her husband and went on, “Did you have to hit him?”
    “Hey, he tried to hit me!”
    “Would it have killed you to give him a few dollars so he would have just gone on his way?”
    “Yeah, he would have gone on his way,” Jake said, “and he would have started bothering somebody else. Don’t go thinking he would’ve used any money I gave him for food or a place to stay, though. He would have drunk it up, just like he drinks up all the rest of the money he begs from suckers like you, Callie.”
    I was sort of agreeing with him until he took that shot at his wife. I thought that wasn’t called for.
    Callie didn’t like it, either. She said, “I may be what you call a sucker, Jake, but at least I have some compassion in my heart.”
    “Yeah. Just not any passion.”
    With that wide jaw of hers set tight, she blew out her breath between clenched teeth and shook her head. “Not … here,” she said.
    Jake spread his hands. “Fine. Let’s go on to this party. At least they’ll have drinks and maybe something to eat, right?”
    Callie didn’t say anything. She just turned and started stalking along the sidewalk, away from the scene of the brief but violent confrontation.
    Jake glanced at Will and shrugged as if to say, “Women, huh?” When he didn’t get any response from Will, he turned and went after his wife.
    “Funny, I didn’t realize we’d gone back in time fifty years,” Will said quietly when the Madisons were out of earshot.
    “You mean because of the way Jake treats his wife?”
    “Yeah. He was pretty rude.”
    Before I could agree with Will, the panhandler whined, “Hey, I’m the one who got knocked down here! Doesn’t anybody feel sorry for me?”
    “Quit while you’re ahead, pal,” I told him. “That guy could’ve broken you in half.”
    Will