Chango Chingamadre, Dutchman, & Me

R.V. BRANHAM

¡

Así!”

Dutchman and me heard it, drawing closer.

“¡De a Pepe timbales!” Dutchman served one of her regulars—a patent attorney—his espresso. “¡Asi!” She made change. “¡Mira el H.P.!”

Dutchman hawked into the sink behind the bar, cleared her throat and covered her mouth before sneezing. She then turned to me: “Hey, M.E., make yourself useful and turn the friggin’ record over.”

M.E., that’s me. Mervyn Eichmann. Now you know why I use the M.E. “¡De a Pepe cojones!”

I put the other side on, and gently slipped the needle onto the edge of that divine platter. Louis Armstrong to you, Sir. Call him Satchmo and you’ll be on your ass. “Potato Head Blues.” (This was the D.B.A. Dutchman had used when she sailed into the rotten apple and decided to get a business shingle and take over this dump—er, ah, bistro—serenaded by her flying phonograph and her flying 78’s, inherited from her uncle, who’d drawn succor from them while stationed on the Maginot Line in the mid-thirties.)

“¡DE A PEPE SANTOS COJONES!”

Who else, none-other-than El C.C., Chango Chingamadre, former Great Black Hope of Bebop, Newyorican Contingent, with a box, a big heavy box. He was a spidermonkey on the needle. A monkey with another monkey on his back. “On The Road,” Chango Chingamadre declared.

“Cool it, babe,” Dutchman told him. “Mistah Armstrong, he’s swinging.”

“Sorry, Dutch.” Chango set the box on the bar. Dutchman examined the side.

“Viking, eh?”

“Fell off the back of the truck,” I offered by way of suggesting how it had come into our acquaintance’s hands. Dutchman unfolded the flaps. It was On The Road.

“B.F.D., babe. The long-awaited Kerouac debut—”

“You can give me twenty for it, eh? C’mon, Dutch.”

“Hey, this is yesterday’s papers. Everybody in the Village has been reading the galleys for donkey’s years.”

“Look.” Chango was sweating. He needed a fix. In a rather bad way. “Gimmie ten now and ten when you sell ‘em all.”

I’d walked over to examine the books. Fifty. Hardcover. I opened one. First edition. And a slip, “Review Copy.”

Dutchman saw the slip: “Why didn’t you say so? Hell they’re worth something.” She took out a couple of ten-dollar bills. “Sorry, I’m a bit short now. Come back tonight and I’ll give you the rest.”

Chango smiled. “… ‘S cool.”

“But Don’t Spend This All On Junk; Get Some Food In You. And get a jacket, ‘s cold evenings.”

“I go to the Queen of Night,” Chango replied, “…’s warm there.”

I poked Chango’s shoulder to get his attention, and he turned to face me. “You ought to stay away from that scene.”

“But I get to sit in with the house band, M.E. I get to jam… we play the secret music. That house band is—”

“House band, my butt,” Dutchman told us while furiously scouring at some other or thing behind the bar counter. “A bunch of hasbeen-neverwas-nevergonnabe no-account junkys—”

I glared at Dutchman. Chango mumbled some Spanish crap and started to leave, but turned, and grabbed a book; he gave it to me. “Keep it for me, till I go home to the old lady.”

Word on the street was that he’d met his old lady at the Queen of Night’s salon. (I’d even heard from one gone case that she was the Queen of Night’s kid sister.) Well, they’d been together, gotten a cold-water boxcar flat with a Harlem air shaft view. Chango insisted that one night he’d found her naked with someone (I think; it’s hard to tell, Chango’d been incoherent on that point, raving on about blood candles and a bowl filled with wax and a goat’s severed platter on a large head) and they’d had an uncool fight. And she’d kicked him out.

“It’ll be good, tu miras, we make up; she take me back home.”

Dutchman exchanged glances with me; we all knew she’d never take him back home. Not now. Now home for her was a six-by-six-by-six plot of land in potter’s field.

Chango was out the door before you could say shit or Shinola. Dutchman frowned, shook her head.

“You really laid into him, Dutch.”

The patent attorney spoke up: “Could I buy a couple of those from you. They’re for a nephew, his bar mitzvah’s next week.”

“Ten percent above cover.” Dutchman was unpacking the books.

“But—”the patent attorney wanted to haggle—”you’ve already got a good markup at cover price.”

I turned away, to let Dutchman hustle a good price from the customer. In the back, by the rest rooms, I saw a woman rush past… actually, I just saw a flash of her flashy dress. It was funny. I hadn’t noticed anyone else besides Chango come in.

“Fifteen percent. I hear you’re a good lawyer. You can afford it.” She put the books on the small bookcase by her dusty bar minor, along with the City Lights Howl and Other Poems.

After a moment the attorney agreed. He became peeved when he asked for a sack and Dutchman said she didn’t have any.

“Closet Beat,” I said, after the lawyer had left.

Dutchman laughed, her dyke laugh.

Dutchman is a dyke; I’ve never seen her with a woman or heard of such Sapphic episodes, but I came on to her once and she wouldn’t hop into bed with me. The only fifteen other women who wouldn’t ride the banana boat with me were, not to put too fine a point on it, lesbians. They’d even told me so, when declining my favors… One time, after a jam session, I’d brought it up with Chango Chingamadre, and he had said, “Who caaares?”

Well, I don’t Dutch…

… She’s family. She is a friend.

“I worry about Chango…” Dutch said.

“What?” I’d been thinking of the gig tonight, about maybe going home and taking a nap, maybe taking the old upright and practicing. East Saint Louis Toodle-oo. Maybe something by Bird. I never played more than one or two songs before a gig. I might jam for hours afterwards. But not before the gig.

“I don’t know.” I gave her that don’t-despair smile (it’s what she calls it). “Maybe we should get him into Bellevue.”

Dutch shuddered. “Cold Turkey. I dunno.”

“I do.” I had been there. I’m no Ishmael, but I’m no Ahab, either, not anymore. People quit when they are ready to quit. Not before. But there is the first step, and Cold Turkey is one first step, one Nanfuckingtucket sleigh ride.

“M.E.,” Dutchman said. “I’ve heard a lot about the Queen of Night. And it doesn’t sound like a good scene.”

“Yeah, well.” I laughed. “A whorehouse that does double duty as a shooting gallery isn’t my idea of a good scene.”

“I’ve heard they’re mercenary bastards—won’t even feed the girls; keep em locked up, doped, and half-starved. Not even a fridge on the premises.”

“But they got a house band, Dutch.”

“They’re too tight to even have a decent cathouse band. From what I’ve been told, you hear ‘em, and even if you’re stoned out of your cranium, you just want to do your business and split. I call that cold-blooded mercenary.”

Her outburst made me curious. “How do you know so much about whores?”

“My great-grandmother ran a very popular bordello in Rotterdam.”

“You never told me—”

“You never asked. Anyway, she kept a buffet, heaping plates and bowls of erwtensoep, spinach tarts, sateh, plover’s eggs, smoked salmon, duck sausages, waffles, all laid out on lace tablecloths… lunch and dinner. And full bar. The Queen of Night doesn’t even have ice for booze, let alone food.”

“But you don’t even serve food, Dutch.”

“I at least serve pretzels,” she yelled.

“So now you’re an authority on the Queen of Night?”

“I have my sources.”

“Rasputin.” I hooted.

“I have my sources.”

I remembered something, about Rasputin. His tour bus, with his “See The Village! An Epiphany & A Meal, Such A Deal!” banners all over it. He always brought them into the Potato Head for espresso and the Beat poetry books Dutchman kept in stock. His name was Rasmussin, but we all called him Rasputin, because of his Svengalish ways with the ladies. Dutchman even had the hots for him. Which I resented. I resented him for trying to convert her. It wasn’t her fault—Rasputin had those pheromones, sex hormones. He was clearly oversexed.

This arrangement, between Dutchman and Rasputin, was quite good in a business sense. But goddammit, if my friend wanted to be a dyke, then who was Rasputin to lay a bourgeois patriarchal routine on her—? And using sex—?!

He would come in with his chiropractors’ wives from Chicago, dermatologists’ divorcees from Des Moines, and Rotarian widows from Richmond, and, while they were ordering espresso or cognac, while they were buying Beat books, he would stand there and irradiate her with his pheromones.

I had seen this. Time and again. So I had to make a moral decision. Either tell her, in which case she’d run upstairs and get all dolled up… or not tell her, in which case he might be too distracted with the seduction of one of his touristas to work on Dutchman.

“Rasputin, he’s coming today—” Dutchman’s a big girl, big enough to make her own mistakes.

“I thought it was tomorrow.”

“Remember, last week; he said he was changing the schedule.”

Dutchman was lifting the wooden grids she kept on the floor, behind the bar. “I’d better hurry and hose these off. They’re filthy.”

“Need any help?”

“You’ve gotta go home, nap, and practice—remember?”

Later, on Bleeker Street, I ran into Raj’neej, an East Indian Welshman of sorts. He always sounded like Dylan Thomas when he talked. Not the Welsh, but the drunk, bit.

“M.E.” We slapped hands. “Have you by any chance seen Chango—”

“No.” I lied.

“I heard he’s hanging out at the Queen of Night’s, jamming with the house band.”

“Yeah.” I remembered something Chango’d said. “Secret Music he calls it.”

“… ‘S secret all right; I go there about a year ago with my drummer, and I hear the house band, hear isn’t the word for it. They stand in a corner, with their eyes closed, fingering their axes like worry beads, and sway. But no sound. A lot of the cats in the room sway too, their eyes closed too. I see my drummer close his eyes, and sway. So I say to myself, when in Rome, shut my lids too. And faintly, ever so faintly, I hear a buzz, a sort of minor chord. There’s an odor, too, a vague smell of cheap perfume. But the more I focus on either the music, or on the aroma, the more they fade. And I start to get a headache, like my cranium says fuck that scene, so I open the eyes. But everyone still sways, eyes still closed, waiting for a wake-up call. It’s a drain, M.E., a real energy suck… I think of the Vetala and Rakshasa of India—”

“Vetala? Rakshasa?” I’d never heard the terms before.

“India’s vampires, who first play tricks, suck your will, then hypnotize you into doing their will. Then they dine on your horse, or on you—I don’t really believe it. I don’t disbelieve it, either; so I leave everyone to their individual karmic dances. I go in a room and find agitated gents at the walls, peeping in on some tantric exchanges. So I go to another room, and there’s a very weird poker game going on, played with tarot cards, and before they put their money in the pot they fold it into frogs or cranes, flowers or whales, paper airplanes. In the next room is the oldest guy—I recognize him, old Gutbucket Slim, from Ma Rainey’s band (he’s like antediluvian). The Gutbucket’s on the nod, in front of a television showing the Dorsey brothers. So I walk over to say hello and observe the hype in his arm; it’s filled with blood. Then blood dribbles from his mouth and down from his nostrils. I turn to call for help, and I hear a lady. She says:

it’s being taken care of,

and through the glass beads of the doorway I see the skirt of a woman, kilometers of ruffles, very Carmen Miranda. I then decide it’s time to depart (like, I don’t want to be there when they fold twenty-dollar-bill origami cranes for Mistah Police); so I return to the main room, and everyone’s still swaying. I drag my drummer out of there; he says it is the most beautiful music he’d ever heard. Month later his playing went to shit in a rickshaw, and I had to fire his ass. Been through two other drummers since.”

I looked at Raj’neej in amazement; I had no idea what occult scene he was getting at, but it made me anxious. I remembered the skirt I had glimpsed at Potato Head.

“I’d like to give Chango a break; he’s too good to waste.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got a gig for tonight; we need skins.” Raj’neej was the coolest pianist I’d heard in a long time; he could’ve blown Brubeck away. Hell, Dutchman snoring could’ve blown Brubeck away. But Raj’neej was good… not Monk, mind you, but good.

“Too bad.” I almost wished I hadn’t lied. But… “He lost his cabaret card, y’know.”

“I could get him a bogus one. Everyone else is clean—if we have a junky sitting in for one or two gigs, there won’t be any hassles. He could use the bread, he might get straight.”

“Go to Potato Head Blues. Tell Dutchman I sent you.”

“I know Dutchman.” Raj’neej paused, and blushed. “I’ve heard—is it true she’s a dyke?”

“Ask her and see.”

* * * *

I was in the middle of the dream of dreams when the phone of phones rang its ring of rings. I picked it up. “M.E., ‘s Dutch; Chango Chingamadre, he’s…”—she fought back sobs—”turning gray!”

“I’ll be there!” I hung up. And I was there, in no time. I ran those seven blocks past needle-head Applejackers slamming into each other as they waltzed their junky waltz in front of bebop music stores, past asthma-inducing bookshops and a zillion bistros, I ran them faster than I’d run any distance before; in terms of speed, I ran one-hundred-thirty-second notes, arpeggiated. I ran up the rickety alley steps to the Dutchman’s loft, which was above Potato Head Blues. She answered the door.

“Raj’neej, he’s in the bedroom, walking him.”

“Have any milk—?”

“For the cat, yeah—”

“—Forget the cat, boil some.” I hurried into the bedroom, where Raj’neej was trying to walk Chango around the room. He was dragging him over his shoulder. Chango, though a foot taller than Raj’neej, must have been thirty pounds lighter… and Raj’neej was a bit on the Bantam Weight side himself.

Chango looked like one of those El Greco paintings of the dead Nazz, all gone to gray and rigor mortis.

I went into the crapper, and found the needle, filled with blood. And the heroin. I tasted the heroin. Looked at the matches. At the spoon. At the matches. And flushed that junk down the toilet.

I then smelled a sweet jasminy perfume, which was odd. The perfume couldn’t have been Dutchman’s, too bourgeois. Dutchman always used an after-shave. Maybe, I thought at the time, it was from one of Dutchman’s apocryphal girlfriends.

And I heard a distant buzzing noise, like a band playing far away, or underwater, on another world. And, just like Raj’neej, when I tried to focus on the music, it faded.

I took the needle to Dutchman, along with the spoon: “Get rid of it. Take it down the alley and dump it.” The milk was ready. “I’ll take this.”

I took the pan. Into the bedroom. “His pulse, it’s light,” Raj’neej told me.

I heard the front door close. “Lay Chango on the bed.” His muscles were slack, his breathing was coming slowly—but it was coming, he wasn’t too cold, or sweating too much. I lifted the eyelids: the pupils had followed Sputnik into space.

“He showed up, and we told him about the gig.” Raj’neej was blowing it. “He said he needed Dutchman’s bathroom to clean up.”

“Go to the kitchen and get a cup. Put sugar and cocoa in it.” I got a towel from the bathroom and wet it, and began to slap Chango’s face with the tip—nothing hard. No response. Nada. Raj’neej came back with the cup. I took it from him and mixed it with the hot milk.

I noticed I’d left a scorch mark on the dresser. Oh well. I mixed the cocoa and milk, stirring it. “Raj’neej, take the towel and slap Chango’s face—” He did so, too vigorously. “Lightly. We want to wake him up, not beat him up, at least not until he’s over it.”

I drank the cocoa, slowly. It was good.

Raj’neej looked up at me drinking the cocoa. He shined it on, and kept slapping Chango; it was working. Chango mumbled.

I heard the door open and close. And caught a glimpse of Dutchman’s skirt as she walked past the doorway, one of those ruffled numbers a Puerto Rican might wear. But not Dutchman. No, that dress was just like what I’d seen that afternoon, just like what Raj’neej had seen at the Queen of Night’s. It had to be nerves, seeing things like that. Then I smelled that perfume again. Chango muttered an oath in Spanish.

“Let’s get him up.” I held him by one shoulder and Raj’neej held him by the other.

I had taken my coat, which was designed for New England winters or summers in San Francisco, and draped it over Chango Chingamadre. We walked. To the living room. Back through the hall, to the bedroom. Back to the living room.

“My gig starts in an hour,” Raj’neej whined.

“We might get him well enough to play. He’s not too bad.”

At one point, when we were in the bedroom, we heard the door open. Dutchman had returned with pots of coffee.

We pumped Chango full of coffee. And after he had thrown up a hearty dinner, we pumped him full of more. And more coffee. We kept walking, finally deciding to walk Chango down the stairs, down around the corner, to the front of the Potato Head, and inside, for more coffee. The Potato was busy.

Rasputin was minding the bar—it surprised me, the decency of the gesture. Of course, he was chatting up a nice lady. We drank more coffee. Raj’neej used the pay phone to ring a cab.

The pay phone rang. Rasputin answered.

He gestured to me. I went and picked up the phone. I was late. First set starts in five minutes. I told them I’d had to help Dutchman take a friend to the hospital, and asked Lou if they could do the first set without me. It’ll be funny for a trio playing with only keyboards and drums. I reassured them I would be there for the second set.

I was wrong.

* * * *

The cab arrived and took Raj’neej and Chango Chingamadre off to the club date, in some Uptown space. They too missed the first set. At least they made the second. And managed to bring the house down on the third.

Not that I’m complaining.

I was going to run back to my place, to get my bass. Dutchman asked me if I could come upstairs. For a drink. To help her calm down. She was a lonely dyke. And I was her friend. How can a friend refuse?

“Do you remember a few years ago, when we were still ‘underground’?”

I sighed: “Those days were intense. Too intense, for M.E.”

She laughed sympathetically. “Yeah.” Then, took a bottle of cabernet from her wine rack. “And that wild poetry reading, where Ginsberg showed up?”

“The”—I busted every time I remembered it—”the crackers.”

“I sent Chingamadre to get crackers; give him the money, and he comes back with every safecracker in Manhattan.”

“And the cops thought there was a burglars’ convention going on, and stormed in and broke the glass window and the mirror, and stole the brass eagle from your espresso machine.”

“I thought Chango’d stolen it, for the longest while.”

We talked about other times, and drank the wine, and went to bed. I am not sympathetic to those who subscribe to the Diddle And Tell school, the We Did It In Our Clothes school, the We Did It In The Shower school, the We Did It On The Kitchen Table school. (Nor would I confirm the existence of a Middle English tattoo on her fanny: Brid Liveth.) Dutchman was a dyke.

* * * *

The next night we were tearing through our second set, and I saw someone seated by the stage:

Dutchman. Dutchman in a dress.

She wore these gorgeous silver glad rags that caught all available light and tossed it back like confetti. She hadn’t come to see me do a gig in quite a while. I dedicated the next song to her. And she bought us a round of drinks.

Then I dedicated the next song to her, and she smiled. But no drinks came forth.

And then another party came in. They also sat by the stage, two tables away from Dutchman. I saw that dress again, the phantom dress, so resplendently Latin, and looked at the face… which I was certain had to be beautiful. But all I saw was two emerald eyes that said,

hello,

and the more I tried to focus on her facial features, the more I was only able to see the eyes, which said,

you make the most gorgeous music I have ever heard, please join us at our table,

I turned away and caught a look from my pianist—he looked worried. He mouthed something. I read his lips:

“Queen of Night.”

I glanced back at the table; the Queen of Night’s consorts were tall and gaunt junkys in tight-fitting penguin suits, with expressions that spoke of heaven or the morgue, rictuses of joy. The Queen of Night caught my attention again, and would not let go. I liquesced in her gaze, her gaze, which said,

come to my place, your music is lovely but it could be even better, you’re better than your companions, you could be vamping,

and I looked back at her, and she must have detected some resistance, because she said,

yes, I have a bordello, and my bordello has many rooms… be my lover, and I’ll cradle you in my beautiful breasts, give you money or anything else you need, and you will be worthy to sit in on the best, most secret music—

And the spell was broken; boy, was the spell broken.

Dutchman walked over to the Queen of Night’s table, and threw a drink at her, and said,

get out of the club, get out now.

Then one of the Queen of Night’s consorts said words, and Dutchman replied that they weren’t the only ones in New York with some connections. No one’s lips moved, but I heard the dialogue, and I’m sure anyone within ten feet could hear it. All of this happened quickly, so very quickly —the pianist and drummer had begun to really wail as Dutchman had gotten up. And the Queen of Night rose; she held no rancor, was dispassionate, as if the Dutchman had beaten her fairly in a game of croquet. But the Queen of Night had a grave dignity. Before the audience was hip to what had gone down, the Queen of Night and her consorts were departed.

After the final set, while having a final round at the bar, Dutchman turned to me: “You’re moving in with me.”

“What did you say?”

“Wipe the drool from your mouth, and don’t get any delusions—it’ll be the couch for you; it’s just that I might have pissed the Queen of Night off; it might be a good temporary measure, protection.”

“Chango wasn’t so protected at your place.” She frowned as I recounted Raj’neej’s Indian vampire lore, and his visit to the Queen of Night’s. And how it tied in with my having seen the very phantom dress the Queen of Night wore, seen it, not once, but twice. And about the phantom smells.

“I think he’d be safe now.” She headed for the Ladies’.

I stared at her: “What? How?”

She didn’t hear. “Might be an idea: get him a sleeping bag.”

* * * *

Chango didn’t make the Potato Head scene after that, so I had not only the couch but the whole Dutchman living room to myself.

Two weeks later, we heard from Raj’neej that Chango Chingamadre had flipped out, jumped out of the cab suddenly when they were on their way to meet Miles Muthafucking Davis. That he’d run into the traffic screaming about secret music and been hit by a Mack truck.

Again, I smelled the phantom perfume, glimpsed the phantom skirt, heard the opening and closing door and the secret music… but only as a memory. And, after all, I was beginning to tell myself, that was just superstition and hysteria rearing their uncool heads.

And it wouldn’t bring Chango Chingamadre back to us.

Nobody could afford to do a decent burial. Besides, his old lady is in potter’s field.

We Three Were Three No More.

The Dutchman moved to Sausalito, north of San Francisco. She owns three restaurants and lives on a houseboat with two Korat cats and a seismologist who’s also a licensed therapist specializing in tarot therapies and future-life regressions. In her spare time, the Dutchman also supervises a rape crisis hotline.

I, M.E., I live in Los Angeles, which is kinder to my arthritis than New York. I write film scores, which is a living, a very good one. I got an Oscar nomination five years ago. I’m not holding my breath waiting for another.

If I’m North, then we do pasta. If she’s South, we do sushi.

I tell her how remarkably young she looks; it’s not a line. And she talks about plastic surgery, and I don’t know whether I believe her, because she has the beginnings of a secretive grin on her face. But no laugh lines. And we talk. Dutchman even talks about Chango (and, at times, we take turns weeping for him), but she refuses to discuss the Queen of Night.

Once we talked about a tombstone, which we could afford to go half-sies on. It would read: “Here Bops ‘Chango Chingamadre,” The Monkey Muthafuckah Of Thems As All.”

There was a problem. We had never learned his real name.

I ran into Raj’neej during a Playboy Jazz Festival… and he couldn’t recollect Chingamadre’s name either. He did recall how Chango OD’ed at the Dutchman’s. And how he found a strange lady crouched over Chango. And how when she faced him, he only saw green animal eyes. And that she’d itsplayed, walked through a wall, and he figured it was the reefer he’d just smoked.

I then told Raj’neej what I’d seen that night, and the next.

“Maybe.” Raj’neej folded his hands. “Maybe Chango’s dead old lady came for him, maybe she needed him more than we did. Or the Vetala claimed him. Or maybe we had what the French call a group delusion.” Raj’neej unfolded his hands, reached for his wine glass. “But maybe not.” He downed the Chablis in one gulp. “Have I ever told you about the ‘63 Newport Jazz Festival?”

“No, but we haven’t seen each other since ‘62.”

“Has it been that long… ? Well, I was producing a live album; we were recording everyone. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Mingus, Ella, Max Roach, Carmen McRae. And this act shows up—I’d forgotten who sponsored them—called the New Queen of Night, and these guys were dead ringers for the house band at the old Queen of Night’s…only, if they were the same cats, they had not aged a day. When they played, it was like the Re-Birth of the Cool, they had the audience and all of us backstage eating out of their hands… nothing ‘secret’ about that music—I tried to catch them after the set, I had an A & R gig for Blue Note, too. So I ran out to the back parking lot to offer them a record contract, and they were tearing out of there in a black hearse. Then later the recording engineer played the tape back, and all we heard was a faint sound, like the secret music crap Chango raved about, like what I heard at the Queen of Night’s. Only there was some percussion, not quite so faint, a clave beat. It was Chango. But no matter how that engineer twiddled those pan pots, the notes stayed faint, became a secret music again. It all made me think of old Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and how he never cast a reflection in a mirror.”

I slouched, felt drained by all the emotions Raj’neej had summoned. But I wanted to hear that music, hear Chango. “You still have the master?”

Raj’neej shook his head. “My engineer, he’d been a junky, but cleaned himself up, like you. He fell apart. Police found him OD’ed in Central Park, they found him by following the trail of master tape he left. I had another copy, but I erased it. Then threw the blank tape away.”

Raj’neej recounted every ghost story he’d ever heard, in India and, later, in Wales. On through the night, and into the cold eye of noon.

But he could not remember Chango’s real name.

So Chango it was, and Chango it shall be. But what about his grave, what about a proper marker?

Well, to hell with the Queen of Night, when Gabriel plays his secret music on his horn I’ll have it put on my tombstone:

Here Bop We Three:

Chango Chingamadre, Dutchman, & M.E.