This guy has committed at least a half dozen murders on behalf of Nuestra Familia. He’s in for murder. He might be willing to flip, to turn state’s evidence. He’s already locked down because he’s in a jam with the rank and file members of the Nuestra Familia, a very violent gang. His brother, gangster Mendoza, had contract to murder me because of my involvement in this federal investigation. My son had already been followed home from school in Fresno area.

Joker, an unusually large Hispanic of about six feet, is a weightlifter. He’s got a denim shirt on, which he’s torn the sleeves off like a tank top, denim pants torn off ragged-edged, flip flops, tattoos all over, a very tough looking character.

Entering with me is an officer from the Department of Corrections internal gang unit.

As we introduce ourselves, Joker turns to me and says, “I’ve heard of you. I’ll talk to you. But I won’t talk with this motherfucker in here.”

The guys turns to me and says, “It’s up to you, Byron.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to him by myself.”

The guy says okay, excuses himself and walks out, leaving joker and myself in this very isolated room at the end of a hallway with the door locked from the outside. About ten minutes into the conversation there is a power failure. The lights go out and we’re plunged into total darkness. Dead silence follows.

It seems like hours go by, but it’s probably thirty seconds. For some reason I start laughing. And then in the darkness, he starts laughing . At one point I hear his chair shuffle.

He says, “You know, you’re in deep shit.”

In the darkness I say, “well, you don’t know what’s pointed at you right now.” We’re in a standoff. Then we both laugh again.

I say, “I guess we’re both in deep shit.”

He says, “Yeah.” And we start talking.

In about forty five seconds, which seems like hours, I see rays of light, and hear guards running down the hall, anticipating a scene of total carnage, that joker has ripped me physically limb from limb. They crash through the door, light us both up with the flashlights, and we’re laughing. I’m kicked back with my feet on the table, and joker’s over in another corner with his feet up.

These guys are befuddled. The lights come back on. Joker tells them to get the fuck out of there.

They get there, open the door, look inside, see somebody on the sofa who appears to be dead. The guy slams the door and the iron door on them. Uniform called swat. We go. They start negotiation with him.

We go into that house, gassed up with our masks on, listening to him talk to negotiators for three hours with two dead bodies no more than three feet away from us, listening to this guy saying, “I don’t care who comes in, I’m going to kill them. I know you’re out there. I know they’re in my kitchen. I can hear them.”

Quiet as you want to be, you’re still going to make noise. You’re breathing through the masks. Plus the guy knows his house, the creaks and noises. Three hours, nonstop.

Finally the negotiator says, “We’re going to try a technique where we’re going to bring him down. If you confront him with a group of guys, chances are he’s going to give up.”

Well, as soon as Felix made entry into the living room, jumping over those two dead bodies, he opens up on us, firing two rounds. Felix was able to get off one shot, caught the guy in the left arm with the shotgun. I shot two rounds with my MP5 sub machine gun. I missed. The shotgun had knifed him around sideways leaving five rounds in the wall in a pattern of softball size where he had been. The guy ducked back in the bedroom.