T Is for Trespass

carried were of her. I walked my route—down Cabana, left on State. I kept an eye on the passing landscape, trying to identify the point from which the photo had been taken. It looked like the eye of the camera was angled downward, but not by much. If she’d been out in the open, I would have seen her. During a run, I keep my focus on the run itself, but not to the exclusion of all else. I was usually out before the sun came up, and as empty as the streets appeared to be, there were always other people about and not all of them good. I was interested in being fit, but not at the cost of being foolish.
    I was torn between a natural desire to be thorough and a need to get to the point. I compromised by walking half the route. My hunch was that her location was on the beach side of the freeway. The buildings along the upper part of State had a very different look to them than the one in the photograph. I’d taken this route for weeks and it surprised me how different the streets looked when I traveled at a walking pace. Retail stores were still closed, but the popular sidewalk cafés were filled. People were heading off to the gym or returning to their cars, damp from their workouts.
    At the intersection of Neil and State, I turned and retraced my steps. It helped that there weren’t that many lampposts—two to every block. I scanned the buildings as high as the second floor, checking fire escapes and balconies where she might have hidden. I looked for windows located at a level that would reproduce the angle from which the snapshot had been taken. I’d almost reached the railroad tracks by then and I was running short of geography. It was the section of building she’d caught in the frame that finally tipped me off. It was the T-shirt shop across the street. The skirting beneath the plate-glass window was quite distinct now that I looked at it. Slowly I walked on until the slice of background matched the picture. Then I turned and looked behind me. The Paramount Hotel.
    I checked the window visible just above the marquee. It was a corner room, probably large because I could see a deep balcony that wrapped around both sides of the building at that point. Maybe the original hotel had had a restaurant up there, with French doors that opened onto the balcony so patrons could enjoy the morning air at breakfast and, later, the setting sun at the cocktail hour.
    I went into the lobby through the front doors. The remodel had been done with an impeccable eye for detail. The architect had managed to capture the old glamour without sacrificing current standards of elegance. It looked like all the old brass fixtures were still in place, burnished to a high shine. I knew this to be untrue as the originals had been looted in the days just after the hotel closed. Murals in muted tones covered the walls, with scenes depicting the fashionable set in residence at the Paramount Hotel in the 1940s. The doorman was on hand, as well as numerous bellhops toting luggage for the patrons checking in. A party of rail-thin women in jaunty hats played a hand of bridge in one corner of the lobby. Two of the four had foxtail furs tossed over their suit jackets with the big shoulder pads. There was no hint that a war was going on except for the scarcity of men. The patio and pool area had been brushed in, the images lifted from old photographs. I could see six cabanas on the far side of the pool, which was flanked with ponytail palms and the larger, more graceful queen palms. What I hadn’t realized, peering at the construction through the barrier, was that the pool extended under a glass wall into the lobby itself. The lobby portion was largely decorative, but the overall effect was nice. In the mural there were vintage automobiles parked at the street and no hint of the various tourist-oriented businesses that now stretched along State. Just to the right, there was a wide carpeted stair in trompe l’oeil curving up to the mezzanine. I turned and saw the same stairway in reality.
    I went up and at the top turned to my right so that I was facing the street. What I’d imagined was a restaurant or lounge was actually a lavish corner suite. The brass number on the door was an ornate 2. I could hear a television set blaring inside. I went to the window at the end of the hall and looked out. Solana must have snapped the picture from a window in the suite because the perspective was slightly off from the place where I stood.
    I went down the wide