Migrant is a thriller novel about a Salinas Detective who is tasked with solving a murder investigation that takes place on the lettuce field of a rich grandfather he had never met.

It was impossible to do ALL the research I wanted to for Migrant.

I had plans of driving up the California Coast, going through Monterey and maybe Oakland, visiting Salinas, spending time with mom in beautiful Northern California. Maybe I would go on some ride-alongs through the valley or chat with some migrant farmworkers, and maybe even a few gangsters or SPD officers.

COVID-19 reared its ugly head and I was stuck at home with none of the research I had sought, a story that wanted to be told about narcotics, guns, and revenge, and huge chunks of time because I wasn’t working my day job. 2020, baby.

I did what research I could…online.

Brought up maps of Salinas and found some good information on it and the gang activity there. Maps of gang territories can be found online.

Migrant could have been just another story of a homicide detective finding a killer in farm country, but this was Salinas, which had, at one time, held the title: Murder capital of California… or youth homicide capital of the country.

I had lived in Salinas when I was younger and even graduated from Salinas high school.

I was familiar with the area, but it had been a long while since I ventured into some of these neighborhoods which had changed drastically in my time away from NorCal. Back when I had lived there, the citizens of Salinas were hardly living under the fear of the ever-growing gang war between the Mexican Mafia, La Eme, from the south and Nuestra Familia from the north.

The Gangsters who controlled the upper half of California were known as the Norteños, while the gangs to the south were knowns as Sureños. Salinas was the dividing line. The Border of Gangland. Salinas wasn’t exactly a small town, and per capita, the murder rate was in the extreme. 

I've written before about the images of a Hispanic cop talking with migrant farm workers whom I had always seen from afar, but never really knew.

And even after writing the book, I was never too clear about why I had chosen to write the book. A funny, or not so funny, thought had come to me a few days ago.

I had been living back in Orange County right after high school graduation and I was having an issue with a guy who chose my alley as the place to indulge his crystal meth addiction.

There were probably some other drugs that existed in that alleyway as well… I’m a light sleeper on the best of nights and the guy would be up at all hours clanging around, yelling, having friends with similar tastes in narcotics hanging out, and so I was sleeping much less.

My neighbor and I were fairly fed up with the noise and trash and had confronted the guy on more than one occasion. He was a savvy addict and often offered just enough menace for us to blow our tops and want use force on him. In which case, it would be us going to jail, and him probably pocketing some much-desired civil suit money.

I had become an apprentice instructor of Bruce Lee’s martial arts, Jeet Kune Do, and had been training some future MMA fighters, even though the UFC would come years later. Point being, it would have been like beating up a five-year-old and would have for sure landed me in jail and cost me a lot of money. Not that I’m violent anyhow, even though, at the time, I knew how to do it… and very much wanted to do some of it on this guy who was making me lose sleep. Let it be known that at this point, I could not fight my way out of a wet paper bag. 

Eventually, we called the police. An amiable officer, probably fifty, (but everyone looks older than they are when you’re younger than him or her) gave us the talk. He couldn’t do anything. Or wouldn’t. The guy was not being violent. He had not vandalized anything, yet. That he was basically a pain that would eventually go away. What he was really saying was, “I got bigger fish to fry than your little loud addict problems.” We were stuck with him. 

The officer then went on to tell us a story.

It goes like this: he had previously been working in a town up in Northern California that we had probably never heard of... Salinas. After my quizzical faced surprise passed, I told him I had graduated from Salinas High School. A bit shocked, he quickly went on to tell us that my childhood town had a REAL meth problem and that a murder-less night was not a common occurrence. I was hoping for some high school alma mater brotherhood story that would lead him to shackle my nightingale and put him away forever. As it was, I only got the story... you lazy story telling officer. 

As lazy as he was, I had zero idea that Salinas was on its way to becoming a war zone. A war zone run by prisoners held in cages miles away utilizing gangsters as soldiers, the city of Salinas as the battlefield, and money, drugs, and murder the spoils. 

It seemed mellow when I had left. What had happened? Evidently, the perfect storm. 

Over the years, I would ask about what was going on when I would visit my mom up there. It had gotten pretty bad—pretty quick. Seemingly overnight. I was gathering information, even though I didn’t know it, for Migrant. It’s interesting all those things that you collect in your head that lay there hidden until they just pop out, like the story of the guy who was hooked on meth and living in the alley right behind my apartment, and the former Salinas police officer that became a Huntington Beach police officer who told me the story of what was happening up in Salinas. 

Migrant could have been just another story of a homicide detective finding a killer in farm country, but this was Salinas, which had, at one time, held the title: youth homicide capital of the country.

Makes me wonder though… would I have even written this novel if it weren’t for the guy who was hooked on meth and not letting me sleep?

In retrospect, it was worth it.