In the summer of sixty-six, a year before the Newark riots, my life took a sudden change. I’d been living in Jersey for about eight months and, for me anyway, things were different in those days. The weather was warm, the ice vendors were making money, the streets were full of laughing kids, and everyone was getting along fine.

Me? I was doing okay. My mood was good, and I had a bit of dough. So, I went up onto the pitch covered roof of my apartment block to drink a few beers and smoke some pot. I call it my asphalt beach.

The apartment manager, Joey, didn’t like us going onto the roof. He wanted to keep it for himself and jerk off or something. He’s an asshole.

So anyways, I’m up there, laying on my towel, and the door bursts open. There’s Joey with a look on his face. He reckons he’s a made guy, you know, hitched up with the Mafia, which I suppose is why he’s a janitor wearing stolen EZClean overalls. Personally, I think he’s just some dumb guinea who knows someone. But he has power over me, and he’s been riding my ass for months now. Maybe he just doesn’t like Poles.

Joey Jerkoff thrusts the broom handle in my face.

“I told ya, ya dumb Polack,” he growls, “da roof is outta bounds. Da letting agents, they ain’t gonna like this. Wouldn’t surprise me if they threw your ass outta here.”

“Aww Joey, I was waiting for you. Got something to show you.”

“Whadyamean show me?”

“You know that blonde in the block opposite?”

“Yeah, what about her?”

“You can see right into her apartment.” I waved my hand at the low wall surrounding the roof. “She lies there on her bed… Naked.”

I could see it in his piggy eyes. He was hooked.

“Show me.”

I lead him over to the wall and lean over.

He leans over too.

“I can’t see nothin’.”

I lean further.

He leans further. And I lift his feet and tip him over the edge. It’s only five floors, but it’s enough. A woman screams and I dodge back behind the wall.

The cops weren’t interested. A detective, name of O’Mahoney, says to me, “It’s funny falling off a wall like that.”

“Look, I don’t wanna speak ill of the dead, but he’s a pervert. He was always trying to look at a girl in the block opposite.”

“You reckon? It would be a real shame if some guy threw him off the roof because his mafia guy cousin would come looking. If I was that guy, I’d make tracks.”

I nodded.

That night, I packed my bag and pocketed my piece. And that’s when it all started: me running and them chasing. I killed eleven of them before the cops decided the fun was over and caught up with me. I gotta say, solitary in death row ain’t so bad, but I miss my asphalt beach and the blonde in the apartment block opposite. I had a good run.