Whatever else you think about invading a country and capturing its President, there’s no getting around the inconvenience of imprisoning Nicolás Maduro in New York City. Maduro is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, near Industry City, in Brooklyn. He’ll be tried at a courthouse in downtown Manhattan. Industry City is already a transit headache. The bus doesn’t run between boroughs. The R train is hit or miss. The B.Q.E., one of these days, is going to collapse. The U.S. Marshals typically transport high-security defendants in a van or an armored convoy. But this tends to ruin everyone’s rush hour. For part of the trial of El Chapo, the city shut down the Brooklyn Bridge; his lawyers tried to move the proceedings to Philadelphia, because the jury pool was poisoned by angry commuters.
“They should’ve indicted Maduro in Davenport, Iowa,” Lenny DePaul, a former marshal, said recently. He went on, “I escorted John Gotti. That was pretty easy—Brooklyn Bridge, early in the morning. Coming over, he would say, ‘Take a right here, I know people in Little Italy, we’ll get a bagel.’ But that was the early nineties. There wasn’t much on the bridges back in those days.” DePaul said the marshals would mix up their transportation strategy, to foil would-be Jack Rubys. Also, so the prisoner didn’t get any ideas. “We had a guy upstate go out the window and jump off a bridge,” he said.
Maduro was transported to his arraignment by helicopter—an apparent first. This had its own complicated logistics, involving two convoys and an improvised landing site on a soccer field near the jail. On the other hand, it saved on the nine-dollar congestion fee. But, to prevent a pattern, you can’t always go by air. Traffic Armageddon seems unavoidable.
Or is it? Last week, a concerned commuter searched for suitable alternatives. At Mazel Tov Moving, a few blocks from the jail, a dispatcher named Avi said his company could do the job. It would probably take forty-five minutes. “If I had lights and sirens, twenty-five,” he said. You’d still want to shut down the Battery Tunnel. Security: decent. Disruption: high.
Closer to the soccer-field helipad, a semi-truck driver named Ronnie, who was hauling cooking salt, said he’d just walk. “There has to be some kind of way to go through the sewer lines,” he said. Time: an hour and three-quarters. Disruption: minimal. Feasibility: low.
The commuter tested more options. The subway was simple (forty minutes, if you time it right) but too uncontrollable. You could rule out the bus, which would require backtracking on the B37 and transferring to the express in Bay Ridge. One unorthodox way was via water. G. Justin Zizes, Jr., a local captain who runs boats for Classic Harbor Line, said that a boat could be launched from Gowanus Bay, but the landing spot closest to the courthouse would be Pier 17, a tricky berth for some vessels because of the currents. “Do you remember this past summer, the Mexican training ship?” Zizes asked. “They were on the north side of Pier 17.” Alternatively, Zizes said, you could use the ferry. One problem: pirates. On a fact-finding trip, there was enough maritime traffic—four barges, eight ferries, one tugboat, one water taxi, and a yacht—to justify a harbor blockade. But the view of the Statue of Liberty was nice. Time: one hour, twenty-six minutes. Security: mediocre. Disruption: high.
If you want stealth, there are plenty of Citi Bike docks near the jail. The bikes are fast, if you ignore red lights—thirty-three minutes from cell to courtroom—and minimally disruptive. The security wasn’t bad in a sense (who’d expect Maduro on a bike?), but dicey from a safety perspective (cars in the bike lane). And you’d be gambling that Maduro wouldn’t just turn around and pedal for the Verrazzano.
Was there a way to combine the nimbleness of a bike with the tactical advantages of a passenger vehicle? Next to the jail, in front of a police cruiser, the commuter hailed a pedicab. It was SpongeBob-themed, and on the back was a sign that read “LESBIANS ON BOARD (PLEASE!)” The rickshaw operator, Johnny Sollitto, said he used to do the Manhattan tourist scene, but now he mostly works Orthodox Midwood. “I’m a Shabbos goy,” he said. (He can flip his sign around to read “SHABBAT or HOLIDAYS, RIDE with SPONGEBOB.”)
Johnny wasn’t sure his rig would be secure enough to transport Maduro, whom he believed to be a fat target: “The election machines, like Dominion, they were created by who? Chávez. Maduro’s gonna reveal all the election fraud.” He set off down Third Avenue. In deference to his Shabbat clients, his rig didn’t blast music. He was warming up to the rickshaw’s viability as prison transport. “What it lacks in speed, it makes up for in evasive capability,” he said, cutting through a Lowe’s parking lot. He considered the Brooklyn Bridge to be the biggest risk—not from assassins but from bikers. “Legally, you can’t take this over the bridge, but it’s the only way into Manhattan.” As he cruised over, he peered downtown, at the helipad. “If you think about it, once he lands there, he’d be a marked man,” he said. “The streets are narrow. Easy to block.”
Forty-eight minutes after starting, including a pit stop for espresso, he made it to the courthouse. “You know what?” he said. “This is the way to go. You put the helicopter in the air with a lookalike. You put Maduro here. With the sign, people would be looking for lesbians, not for a dictator.” ♦
