Tidyman - Shaft

SHAFT IS BIG. SHAFT IS BLACK

The cloistered daughter of Harlems black crime-boss discovers the true nature of her fathers work and runs off to be as bad as Dad. Sex, liquor, dope and a few other scenesshe is into them all when she disappears. Big Daddy wants Big Shaft to get his baby back.

Shaft goes to work. And The Mafia, the Black Militants, the NYPD, and City Hall go to work on

SHAFT

Classic John Shaft Novels by Ernest Tidyman

Shaft (1970)

Shaft Amoung the Jews (1971)

Shafts Big Score (1972)

Shaft Has A Ball (1973)

Goodbye, Mr. Shaft (1973)

Shafts Carnival of Killers (1974)

The Last Shaft (1975)

New John Shaft Novels

Shafts Revenge (2016) - David F. Walker

John Shaft Graphic Novels

Shaft: A Complicated Man (2015) - David F. Walker

All rights reserved, Copyright 1970 by Ernest Tidyman. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

Reprint edition edited by Anthony Marques and Kevin Ketner

Cover art by Robert Hack

Reprint production by Alexis Persson

Dynamite Entertainment

113 Gaither Dr., Ste. 205

Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054

dynamite.com

For Dynamite:

Nick Barrucci, CEO / Publisher

Juan Collado, President / COO

Joe Rybandt, Executive Editor

Matt Idelson, Senior Editor

Rachel Pinnelas, Associate Editor

Anthony Marques, Assistant Editor

Kevin Ketner, Editorial Assistant

Jason Ullmeyer, Art Director

Geoff Harkins, Graphic Designer

Cathleen Heard, Graphic Designer

Alexis Persson, Production Artist

Chris Caniano, Digital Associate

Rachel Kilbury, Digital Assistant

Brandon Dante Primavera, Director of IT/Operations

Rich Young, Director of Business Development

Alan Payne, V.P. of Sales & Marketing

Keith Davidsen, Marketing Manager

Pat OConnell, Sales Manager

Print ISBN: 978-1-52410-016-2

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Tidyman, Ernest.

Title: Shaft / Ernest Tidyman.

Description: Mount Laurel [New Jersey]: Dynamite Entertainment, 2016.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-52410-016-2

Subjects: LCSH African American detectives--Fiction. | Detective and mystery stories.

| Urban Fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / General.

| FICTION / African American / Mystery & Detective.

Classification: LCC PZ4.T5588 2016 | DDC 813.54 dd23

First Dynamite printing July 2016

Printed in China

For

Grace Johnson,

Diane Schereschewsky

Nancy Ware

Without whom

SHAFT

would have been impossible.

And

Constance Bogen,

Ronald Hobbs,

Judith Oppenheimer Leth,

Charles Mandlestam,

Warren Picower,

Jack Robbens,

Sylva Romano,

Leo Rosen,

Helen Sears,

Billie Jean Tidyman

Without whom

I

would have been impossible.

SHAFT FELT WARM, LOOSE, in step as he turned east at Thirty-ninth Street for the truncated block between Seventh Avenue and Broadway. It had been a long walk from her place in the far West Twenties. Long and good. The city was still fresh that early. Even the exhaust fans of the coffee shops along the way were blowing fresh smells, bacon, egg and toasted bagel smells , into the fact of the gray spring morning. He had been digging it all the way. Digging it, walking fast and thinking mostly about the girl. She was crazy. Freaky beautiful. Crazy. They went out to dinner and she was wearing a tangerine wig and a long purple coat that looked like a blanket on a Central Park plug pulling one of those creaky carriages. It was the mood she was in and he had become a part of it. He never got back to his apartment. She wanted a night like that. They had it and, then, about 7:30, she handed him a glass of cardboard-container orange juice and began pushing him out of the apartment. It was their night, but the maids day.

Please, John. Hurry.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes.

Hey, you think that cleaning lady gives a shit about your morals? All she has in her head is twelve a day and tokens.

Just hurry. Go.

He hurried, he went. It gave him time to kill. There was no point in turning back toward the Village and his own place. His clothes were fresh. He had hardly worn them except for dinner. The subway or a cab would have been too quick for the trip to Times Square. So he walked. A big, black man in a gray lightweight wool suit moving quickly through the morning. The light at Thirty-ninth and Broadway caught him. He paused for a moment at the corner. The garment-district trucks were beginning to roll into the area. Shaft watched them and glanced north toward Times Square.

Sitting in his office up there, staring out at it when he had first found the rooms and moved in a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet and a few hopes, he had looked for a point of view, an attitude in Times Square. He failed to find it. He decided it was a giant pinball machine. The biggest goddamn pinball machine in the world. In the early morning, like now, it lay there dull and dusty. All the parts were scattered around. But nothing was working. The dime went into the slot about six in the evening, turning on the juice. Then the whole thing caught fire. The bumpers, bangers and zingers lighted up, and channels and traps glittered, the shimmering steel balls flashed from point to point while the score was emblazoned across the top half of it with shrieking glare. If it had a mystique, he thought, that was it: a big irresistible pinball machine. Go steal some more money from your mamas purse; well hit four million this time and win a free game. That was its point of view, its attitude. He liked it. It suited his needs for a temporary place.

Shaft began to pick up its vibrations as he waited for the WALK sign to flash green permission for the crossing. All that up Broadway a few blocks had become a part of him and was waiting for him. He stepped off the curb and moved easily around the grill of a battered Dodge truck, rolling with the contained grace of a solid, muscular man who stays in balance, who can land running or at a halt, poised to run again.

I love to watch you get out of bed and go to the bathroom or the window or the kitchen, she said against his shoulder, a hand flat across the slab of pectoral on the right side of his chest, holding him, stroking him. You uncoil like an animal coming out of a cave. He blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling. She could not see him smile. It was much too dark. Her hand moved from his chest across the flat ripple of muscles sheathing his stomach. It must have been 5 A.M., but it didnt matter. He could always sleep, he could always die. But he couldnt always do this. Not with someone like her.

The thought of her clung to him like her cologne. Shaft glanced up at the gleaming triangle of the Allied Chemical tower at Forty-second Street, then back at the driver of the cab inching toward him across the tattered white lines of the crosswalk. The drivers milky blue eyes were clouded. Maybe with fatigue from a night of cruising. Maybe with hate from a life of hacking. Honky Sonofabitch. Shaft stared him down. The cab stopped inching. One of these days, he would go over to Lexington to Uncle Sams umbrella shop and order a bamboo-looking walking stick of Swedish steel to enforce a system of forfeits and penalties for cabs. Too close to the knees, one headlight. Too close to the back, a rear window. Slight physical contact, two headlights and the windshield, and if the driver got out of the cab... The worst they would bust him for was malicious mischief.