Jeff’s Reviews > Shaft > Status Update

Shaft beats the wrap and chills out with his middle class accountants family. He gets a police badge and heads to the airport to cool out.

Shaft, Buford’s men and Willie Joe go to Washington square to burn it down. Shaft sings “shaft is gonna light your fire” aka the doors.

“3 guineas” beat the living hell out of Shaft and leave him on Knocks’s doorstep. Shaft is all pain and demands Doc Powell, an old boxer to patch him up like a fighter. Shaft is a cracked shell but demands Buford to provide him with 20 men to go down the Thompson at and fight the mafia. It can’t be Knocks’s criminal men. It has to be Buford’s revolutionaries

Shaft doesn’t think. He acts and reflects later. He only reflects on the results. Shaft and Charlie talk in the coffee shop. 6 cops have joined them and are observing in the corner, near the hippies who shaft despises. Beatrice for Harlem. That’s the deal. Charlie walks shaft through a dirty tenement to Beatrice. Before opening the door Shaft shoots Charlie in the head.

Shaft runs thru Greenwich to lil Italy and tells 4 bartenders “tell the mafia shaft is looking for them”. He goes to a coffee shop mcdougal and Bleecker and sits and waits. An Italian “as hard” as Shaft meets him at 4:18am. This chapter had good late nite NYC descriptions. It pains shaft and a hard animal. He has no plan, he is just improvising. He is a BA or a dumb bastard.

Shaft don’t sleep. It’s 3:00am. He is done with the bone zone and needs to get something done before the bars close up around 3:30. He leaves Valerie in his apartment

Shaft takes home a “spinner” named Valerie and the bone in the shower. Meanwhile Anderozzi tells the commissioner to wait for shaft. Buford holds a rally about killing a pig today. And Carmen Caroli is in jail with a headache. We learn his bro Charlie is in charge of the mob and they have a girl they are drugging every 8 hours.

It was the Italian mob that shot up Burke’s place. They were after Shaft. This is an entertaining chapter where Shaft pretends to be a bartender to trick 2 Mob hit men who are there to kill shaft. It ends with the police arresting them, shaft get spit on and he breaks a bottle over the hit man’s head.

Buford knocks shaft on his ass in Knock’s office. “This cat knows where Beatrice is”. They eventually talk straight. Black on black crime. How the Italians are out of Spanish Harlem so knocks picked up the heroin trade. 10 million a year. Guess where Beatrice is?

Shaft escapes the police raid with Buford. Ben’s men don’t make out alive. Gunned down on the roof. 5 blacks, 5 whites died. But the white police died from friendly fire. Shaft hides out at middle class sanctuary in riverdale. Home of Helen and Marvin. Anderozzi fills in the mayor. He is asked by Shaft to set up a meeting with the mafia(insurance?). B&S go see Knocks Persons.