The Pescador's available.

 And what serendipity. Just now, City Hall needs a top administrator above suspicion, with no known ties to the CIA, KGB, INS, FBI, MPD (Miami Police Department) or other subversive initials.

 Miami needs someone unsullied by past ties with Janet Reno, Xavier Suarez, Donald Warshaw, Maurice Ferre, Howard Gary, William O'Brien.

 Miami, in other words, needs someone beyond the paranoid imaginings of Joe Carollo.

 Miami needs a hero. The mayor needs a lackey.

 The mayor also needs a city manager after he jettisoned Warshaw in a post-Elian tantrum reminiscent of the Loco Joe of old. The Fisherman's ready.

 SAY IT AIN'T SO

 Donato Dalrymple, who has pushed his Warholian allotment of fame into overtime, suggested to The Washington Post last week -- this was before his appearance on Geraldo -- that he was considering a plunge into Miami politics.

 ``When I'm in Miami, people shout to me, `Pescador, Pescador . . . We need leaders here.' I hear screams, `Donato for mayor! Donato for mayor!'' . . . Cubans love me. Yeah, I could see myself walking through that door and maybe running for mayor or that lower office, you know, what is it? Commissioner or something?''

 Carollo could preempt this populist uprising and insert this possible rival into a job most qualified candidates think has the life expectancy of a fruit fly.

 Some might question Dalrymple's credentials. But consider that he has already proven himself a quick learner. Donato Dalrymple, after all, parlayed a single fishing trip last Thanksgiving, his first ever, into a status as America's best-known fisherman.

 Similarly, though his more subdued cousin Sam Ciancio, an actual fisherman, was the fellow who leapt into the ocean and rescued young Elian Gonzalez, it was Donato who makes personal appearances as the child's savior. Two weeks ago, when federal agents came for Elian, it was Dalrymple who scooped up the kid and ran into a closet in a pointless exercise, except that it lent his face to a world-famous photo.

 CLEANUP HITTER

 World-famous Donato has made so much of so little. Which, given the state of Miami's finances, ranks right up there with an obsession with Cuba as a qualification for the city's top administrative post. The Fisherman's real-life occupation, house cleaner, should make him even more appealing to Carollo, who has suggested that conspiratorial characters haunt the police department and it's in need of a housecleaning.

 The job ought to appeal to Dalrymple's newfound ambition, since, though he talks of running for mayor or city commission, he's hampered by a wife and residence back home in Lauderhill. Though Lauderhill, at this point, might be glad to relinquish its best-known resident.

 Carollo and Donato, in effect, have already teamed up as Crazy Joe and The Fisherman, whose antics have enabled national media to dismiss Miami as a cartoonish place, reducing the city's pain and turmoil to fodder for Leno and Letterman monologues.

 This weekend, Jay Leno joked, ``A poll shows that 98 percent of Americans want to know what the creepy man was doing in the closet with Elian.''

 Maybe he was waiting for a call from Joe.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald