Serge walked calmly through the concourse. Every couple of minutes, officers ran by. Serge checked gate after gate, concourse after concourse, but each time police were set up before he got there. He turned and headed back toward the exits, but now the cops were there too. More trotted through the terminal. “Shit,” Serge muttered and put his head down and walked into the cafeteria.

He grabbed a tray and stood in the chow line, looking up at the menu board of food priced like jewelry. “I’d rather do time!” he said, and walked out without a purchase. More cops. He ducked in the newsstand and nonchalantly rifled a glossy magazine that delved into the courage of John Travolta and tastier pound cake.

He held the magazine up to his nose and peeked over the top of Travolta’s head, looking for an angle.

He studied arriving travelers. Businesspeople with jet lag, middle-class vacationers back from middle-America, glassy-eyed relatives arriving for a funeral, skiers back from Aspen, golfers back from Pebble Beach, nuns, and four illegal Asian immigrants slipping past customs posing as Chinese nuclear spies. Everyone rolling suitcases with wheels, moving with purpose.

A distinguished businessman rolled his suitcase into the bar across from the newsstand, and Serge kept an eye on him. The man had touches of gray at the temples that made him look senatorial, but he was in fact the front for a Pacific conglomerate selling counterfeit gold-crown car air fresheners. The man took a seat in the airport bar, ordered a Harvey Wallbanger and wolfed Spanish peanuts from a sterling service bowl. Two seats down was an elegant, tall brunette of obvious sophistication, who initiated conversation.

After five minutes of small talk the salesman was discreetly propositioned by the call girl. The pair left together for the airport hotel. Serge’s eyes swung across the concourse. No cops at the elevator to the airport hotel-they were expecting a fugitive to flee, not put up for the night.

Serge put down the magazine and began following the businessman forty feet back. He looked around. Off to his right, a cop was moving toward the hotel elevator. Serge picked up his pace.

The businessman and call girl were in the elevator, smiling at each other, waiting for the doors to close. The cop was talking in his walkie-talkie, just arriving at the elevator. Serge was fifteen feet back. The doors started closing.

Serge called out toward the elevator and began running: “Mr. Johnson, wait up! The office has been trying to reach you all day!” He jumped through the closing elevator doors as the cop turned to say something.

“I’m not Mr. Johnson,” said the businessman.

“I know,” Serge said, and smiled and then looked up at the ascending floor numbers over the door.

The businessman made an unheard joke to the call girl, and they both laughed at Serge’s expense. Serge turned to them and nodded and grinned.

The doors opened at seven. The businessman got out a magnetic plastic card and opened a room across from the elevators. Serge headed down the hallway, looking for the stairwell.

Serge had walked down to the fourth floor when he heard two cops coming up the stairs. He ran back up to seven and down the hall.

When Serge burst into the hotel room with gun drawn, the businessman was sitting on the edge of the bed in a Santa Claus outfit, and the hooker was on his lap wearing altar boy vestments.

“I can explain…” the man began.

Serge cut him off with a pistol whip. “I don’t want to know. Just gimme all your money and ID.”

He had another thought. “And gimme that red suit, too, while you’re at it.”

Welcome Miami Vice fans!” read the pink-and-aqua banner over the hotel entrance on Miami Beach.

In the lobby, dealers sat behind dozens of card tables, doing brisk business. Jan Hammer CDs. Philip Michael Thomas 8×10s. Ferrari Matchbox cars. Board games, coffee mugs, police badges. There was a line of people with luggage waiting to check in at the front desk, wearing Ray-Bans, pastel T-shirts and white Versace linen jackets.

Later that evening in the auditorium, a man who did not look remotely like Don Johnson was onstage playing Sonny Crockett. A woman dressed like a prostitute played Gina.

Suddenly, “Gina” ripped off her wig and threw it to the ground.

“I didn’t get my GED just to play a prostitute!” she yelled.

Don Johnson grabbed her wrists and said he loved her.

The audience whistled and applauded.

It wasn’t part of the script. The woman ran out the side door of the hotel, and the man followed.

He found her sitting and crying in his convertible parked on a side street off Ocean Drive. It was a pink Cadillac Eldorado. Running the length of the car down to the tail fins was an airbrushed Miami Vice logo and the words Lenny Lippowicz-The Don Johnson Experience.

Lenny Lippowicz was the pride of Pahokee, Florida. He dropped out of high school and bounced around as a spot welder in the shipyards and Ploeti petroleum storage compounds of Jacksonville, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. He did a little bartending, worked a carnival in Margate, and stinted as an unqualified dive operator off Boca Raton.

He got fired from the dive boat after a bad head count left a never-found tourist behind at sea, and he drove west across the swamp. He stopped at an authentic Indian Swamp Village, where he bought authentic tribal garb woven by authentic Chinese political prisoners. When he got to Fort Myers, he put on the colorful Indian outfit and walked into the administrative office at Sunken Parrot Gardens and applied for alligator wrestler.

“What are your qualifications?”

“Look at this fantastic outfit!”

He was hired on the spot.

Lenny figured the trick to gator wrestling was keeping them fat and happy, and he fed them so much they lay around the pond drowsy all the time like a living room full of uncles after Thanksgiving dinner.

Lenny arrived in the morning and moved the red plastic hands on the fake clock that said, “Next show at…” He got into his Indian costume and dragged annoyed alligators around by the tail. He picked the frailest and tucked the end of its jaws under his chin. He stuck out his arms-“Look, Ma, no hands.”

It was a pleasant life and Lenny started to like the costume. Then he was fired again. One of the alligators got away while Lenny was smoking a joint behind the serpentarium, and it ate one of the parrots, which wouldn’t normally have gotten Lenny fired except it ate the only one that could roller-skate.

The next day, Lenny went to the newsstand down the block from his apartment and saw a small article in the local paper about the alligator eating the bird.

A few days later Lenny stopped by the same newsstand and noticed a London tabloid with a vibrant cockatoo photo on the cover. A big story with a giant headline: “Gator Chomps Miracle Bird in Florida Feather Fest!”

The Weekly Mail of the News World had lots of dramatic details and described the parrot roller-skating for its life down a handicapped ramp at the gift shop with the gator in hot pursuit. Lenny knew the sensational details were all made up. But it was great copy.

“I can do this!”

Lenny launched his new career as freelance Florida correspondent for the sleazier side of Fleet Street. He wrote a fake résumé and exaggerated stories. He struck oil. The Brits went ape for anything Florida. The stories the tabloids wanted most: tourists attacked by narco-criminals with machine guns, alligators, the Everglades stinkfoot, old-time gospel preachers caught with transvestites, tourists attacked by alligators, tourists attacked by stinkfoot, flesh-eating bacteria in Jacuzzis, and coconuts found growing in the likenesses of the royal family.