It sounds like an ill-conceived pitch for a Hollywood B-movie:

Shark on a train.

But that misbegotten premise was all too real for some downtown commuters Monday night when the Metromover doors opened at Bayfront Park and they were forced to sidestep a listless six-foot nurse shark.

``The door opened and the shark was sitting by the front of the door,'' said Mae Singerman, a 24-year-old musician who was practicing for a show on the Metromover platform.

``I didn't see a reason to call police,'' Singerman said. ``It's Miami. Stranger things have happened. The doors shut, and then we forgot about it.''

The shark was barely alive, but some commuters said its gills were moving.

There is still plenty of mystery surrounding the tortured landside trek of the bloodied shark and the sweaty men who abandoned it on the streets of Overtown after failing to sell it to the Miami River fish markets for $10.

Nobody knows who the men were and where they hooked the shark. But the odyssey started some time after 5:30 p.m. Monday when it was first spotted on the free driverless Metromover trains circulating through downtown.

PLENTY OF ROOM

A hook and clear fishing line fastened to it, the sandy brown shark had some blood on its face. Passengers gave the man and his shark plenty of room.

``We looked at him; he didn't really say anything,'' Sandy Goodrich, a Miami legal secretary, said of the man clutching the shark. ``I was just so freaked out about the shark on the floor.''

Goodrich, who took three photos when she got off the train, said another woman with whom she was riding alerted a security guard.

But a Miami-Dade Transit spokesman said he had no reports of a shark sighting on the Metromover. He said employees looked through surveillance video on Wednesday and couldn't find anyone carrying a shark onto a platform or a train.

But surveillance cameras did capture the shark's next known appearance eight blocks west of the train along the Miami River.

Two disheveled men -- one on a bike and the other on foot -- are seen dragging the shark down Northwest North River Drive. They had attached a rope to the shark's tail and were seen lugging it with a piece of wood down to two local fish markets.

Casablanca Fish Market owner Jorge Sanchez was unimpressed with the walk-in offering.

``It was full of flies,'' he said. ``It was still alive. It was dry.''

The men claimed the shark weighed nearly 90 pounds. Asking price: $10.

``I do buy shark,'' Sanchez said, ``not this kind of crazy stuff.''

As they dragged the shark away, tourists stopped to take photos.

DUMPED IN STREET

The would-be shark salesmen apparently gave up Monday night and dumped their unusual catch near the intersection of Northwest Fifth Avenue near Fourth Street in Overtown.

The next morning, workers at a nearby body shop spotted the now-very-dead shark in the street and tried to dispose of it.

``When the garbage is coming, we tell them, pick it up,'' said Eduardo Perez, who works at the shop. ``They tell me no. All day long the shark was there. . . . This was only in Miami.''

Police were called at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, along with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The unidentified men could face misdemeanor charges under state law -- unless, of course, they had the proper fishing and wholesale licenses.

As for the dead shark, wildlife officers returned it to its ocean home for an underwater burial.

Miami Herald staff writers Robert Samuels and Larry Lebowitz and photographer Walt Michot contributed to this report.

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