“The woman who gave it to me was a friend of yours,” Vish said. “Isabella Madre.”
Sparky raised an eyebrow. He stuffed the bracelet in the pocket of his suit coat. “You do get around, don’t you?” he said. “Isabella. Outstanding. I’m surprised she helped you. You’re not her responsibility.”
“What does that mean?” Vish asked.
Sparky shrugged. “Division of the city. I handle the entertainment industry, so I’m responsible for you, more or less. Troy—we’re still calling him Troy, remember, but that’s just shorthand—has the beaches. Isabella’s got the tired and poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
“Immigrants?”
“Yep. She picked that for herself. She might be the only soul in the city who genuinely doesn’t give a crap about Hollywood.” He pursed his lips in thought. “Could be she has a soft spot for you. Your parents weren’t born here, right? Maybe that was close enough to count.”
“Is she related to you?” Vish asked. “Madre, Mother?”
“‘Mother’ is a very common last name,” Sparky replied stiffly and, to the best of Vish’s knowledge, wholly inaccurately.
This whole section is pretty spoilery, for both Wrong City and Demon City. Proceed with caution.
In Wrong City and Demon City, it's established that Los Angeles is unofficially ruled by a cluster of supernatural beings (they might be demons, they might be something else entirely), who've divided up the city by its population. Only four are known thus far: Sparky Mother, by far the most powerful of the beings, runs the entertainment industry. The wormlike creature that possessed Troy and Phillip runs the beaches. Isabella Madre is in charge of immigrants, and Demon City's Young Park is in charge of the homeless and transient population.
In Demon City, Vish creates a television series, Anathema, which is a fictionalized account of this hierarchy. Ridpath Washburn plays Carlos Mater, a sinister Sparky-esque figure.
