RUNNING IN YELLOW

The lady was dressed all in yellow. She also had a yellow hat, a handbag and shoes too yellow.

Yellow was the big Maserati he had to follow. “ Follow the car of that bastard wherever he goes! Don’t lose sight of it! Have you seen the license plate? It’s: EK 773867”

Joe ___also the taxi he was driving was yellow ___had put it in fourth and had set off in pursuit.

When any other car entered between his taxi and the raised ass of the yellow Maserati, the lady in yellow became nervous and started shouting. “ By God! Look: I don’t care how it will cost me, but you don’t have to give it that car! But more: you don’t have to risk losing sight of it! The bastard! I don’t only have to follow him! I don’t even have to lose sight of him, by God!”

The yellow Maserati, after a short ride, left the city and took a very bumpy mountain road. It stopped in front of a hotel. There too the taxi stopped and the lady in yellow got out and entered the hotel, following the gentleman driving the Maserati.

Joe thought of them either as husband and wife who had some business to settle or…as clandestine lovers. He pocketed his fee and thought no more about it.

Except that the following day the woman who had asked him to follow the yellow Maserati and whom Joe had seen entering the mountain hotel was found dead in a room of just that hotel, the Astoria hotel, where Joe had left her. He recognized the woman from the photo. Her name was Diana F., she was 38 years old, was a teacher, was divorced, and had no children. It was said of a suicide. There was no mention of the Maserati or the man driving it in the newspapers and on television.

Joe, even though conflicted, decided to go to the police to tell about the woman, a completely unknown to him, who, two days before had asked him to follow the yellow Maserati, whose license plate he remembered from having noted it down.

The yellow Maserati with license plate EK 7738 67 turned out to belong to Paul K., Diana F’s ex-husband. But the man had reported his car stolen a week before his ex-wife’s death, which is why when Diana F. had asked the taxi driver to follow that car it could not be her ex-husband who was driving it but probably whoever had stolen the Maserati.

Joe was asked to describe the man driving the Maserati, but he was able only to tell about his height and build, ah, and that he was bald, since he hadn’t seen him in the face. Yes, he had seen from a distance his eyes in the car mirror, which were clear and great. He was a tall, stocky and bald man with clear eyes, as Diana F.’s ex-husband was. But when Joe had been shown, in the photograph and in person, Paul K. he hadn’t felt like recognizing him as the man driving the Maserati. Of course, he could not even rule out he was.

The stolen car had not been found until now. It was found some days after. The car had fallen into an escarpment and set on fire. It was not possible to establish the identity of the man driving the car because his cadaver was completely charred. However, it was said that it had not been an accident but a homicide. Suspected was Diana F.’s ex-husband, who continued to proclaim himself completely innocent. Not only Paul K. was suspected of the death of the man aboard the Maserati, but even of the death of his ex-wife, since the autopsy had determined that the woman had been suffocated.

Paul K. was investigated for months but then was acquitted, without going to trial.

Joe went on with his usual life: his job as a taxi driver, some love affairs, and time playing cards at the bar with friends.

  Although now he could not establish when it had started, for some time now every time he had been driving his taxi he happened to come across a late model yellow Maserati identical to the one Diana F. had asked him to follow that day.

Driving that car was a tall, stocky, bald man that looked like the one driving the Maserati he had followed that day and, so they said, had ended up in an escarpment set on fire.

That man could have been Diana F.’s ex-husband, but Joe was not sure of it. Sitting next to that man there was always a blonde woman, dressed in black, beautiful. The two laughed a lot, they saw each other and broke into laughter. Maybe they laughed at him, at his embarrassment, at his disbelief, Joe thought. He started following that yellow Maserati and then happened to him that the big car, when he was a short distance from it, suddenly disappeared. No, the Maserati didn’t lose him, and he didn’t lose sight of it, but the big car literally disappeared under his eyes, under his nose. And that was not all. A few minutes after the Maserati had disappeared under his eyes, it reappeared behind him, at a short distance from his taxi, now as if it were following him. And those two sitting in the car laughed, always laughed. Sure, they laughed at him. Joe decided to confront them, he wanted to know what game they were playing.  But every time he got out of the taxi and went towards the Maserati, gesturing to ask it stopped, the big car no, it didn’t run away, it disappeared as Joe approached the car as if by magic, the air remained in its place.

That morning it seemed that finally, even the driver of the Maserati was willing to meet him.

When Joe had gotten out of his taxi and signaled for the car to stop, it had stopped. The man driving the car had gotten out and was going toward Joe. A few more steps and they would be facing each other. The man, who now seemed at him, without a shadow of a doubt, Diana F.’s ex-husband, crossed and waved his arms in the air. And then, suddenly, it was Joe to disappear, even his taxi disappeared.

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