Against my better judgement M convinced me to go back in and find out what was really going on and to leave my $600 camera in her orange hands. I approached the door and a short chubby Hispanic cop, who M and N tell me was a woman, but I would have never guessed, asked me to open my jacket to look for my camera. She said she would arrest me if I didn't hand over the tape. I calmly ask her what right do they have to the tape. It was a public event, other people were video taping up there and that no one at any point had asked me to stop taping.

At that point the manager spotted the bright orange cave boy and pointed across the street at ECB and said that it was in the black bag that Evil was carrying. The cop said "I don't even want to talk to you any more" and went across the street towards Evil Cave Boy.M started to make an exit to the southeast, from whence we came. I figured it was time to also make mine, and casually sauntered southwest towards Broadway to roundabout to my place as a hoped for rendezvous place. We had no contingency plans but I thought this was only prudent. I removed my jacket to make an imagined radioed APB more difficult to execute and peered hopefully up the Avenues for a flash of Bright Red hopefully not Pursued by Blue.

I arrived home without incident, half expecting to find her there waiting for me to let her in, and half expecting to have to bail them out. I was overjoyed to get a call from M about five minutes later. She had not been pursued by the chubby cop, and only had to go as far as the parking lot about a half block away and in full sight of the cop to avoid her grasp. I imagine the cop was thinking, with the wisdom of the everyday NYC Cop, of what kind of quagmire of paperwork and doubtful legalities that a hot pursuit of this girl in a furry red bikini and Bigfoot Booties would entail, and to what purpose. And who knows, maybe there could be another camera around and what would it look like on COPS.

Maybe this will turn up as comic relief in an
episode of NYPD Blue this season.
As it turns out, Mateo ended up having to hand over the super-8 film and apologize to the manager under duress of arrest.
And Marianna and Nicolette made it back
to my place shortly thereafter.