A Lay-man's Plotline

Here's a surefire Miami Vice plot: A newfangled shipping company bursts on the scene down in Miami, and is lauded as revolutionizing an otherwise straightforward industry with technology and innovation. Investors rush in, the founders get filthy rich and start winning high-level government friends with exorbitant campaign donations.

Turns out the company is a front for the drug cartels, and the stock wealth disappears overnight, causing tens of thousands to lose their life savings. Lawsuits ensue and assets are frozen, but not before the CEO can stash about $50 million to keep his family fed. And not before he helps a former CIA chief and his family take prominent political posts in Florida and beyond. The CEO is facing life in prison, but dies of a heart attack just before he's convicted and sentenced -- coincidentally, his untimely death occurs on vacation with all of his family close by.

Autopsy is clean, but Crockett and Tubbs don't buy it. They go on to reveal a conspiracy way beyond a mere corporate scam, something that goes onto the highest levels of government and jeopardizes their lives and the very foundations of law enforcement and law itself.

I am torn between Sudden Death and Loyalty Oath as my working titles for the episode (or movie sequel). For further script notes, just do a couple searches mixing the terms 'Ken Lay' and 'George Bush'. It's all there, clear as the Enron business plan.