My first rule was always to keep normal business hours, because in the legitimate world, professionals are at their desks each morning. It was only a five-minute drive from my bayfront apartment in the residential section of Miami's Brickell Avenue financial district to my tiny downtown office. Remember, low-profile is not only a necessary evil when you are looking to fly below the radar of law enforcement agencies, it also discourages legitimate clients from seeking your services.

If you are a frequent traveler on little or no advance warning, one cannot worry about court appearances, scheduled real estate closings or clients who call up daily for status reports. When the clients engaged in illicit enterprises need you to pack your bag and head overseas, you must go. That doesn't mean that you decline everyone who comes in the door, you just ensure that you restrict your "clean" business to small matters that will not interfere, or require your physical presence, when you must be on laundering errands for your "priority" clients, who as career criminals can be extremely demanding.

Thus, I would show up at the office at the same time as my legitimate colleagues, three criminal defence attorneys with whom I shared space. Did they perhaps suspect that I was engaged in rendering "unusual" legal services? Probably, but it was the " Don't ask, Don't tell" rule that most lawyers engaged in criminal defence subscribed to, under the guise of attorney-client privilege. One can hide an awful lot of crime inside that principle. 

Mornings would be spent doing things like:

• Call up Wilmington or Dover corporate service providers to enlist their services to form Delaware corporations, to be used to hold title to vessels or aircraft destined for narcotics smuggling duty.
• Contacting a favourite licensed ship's surveyor who, although he lived in Miami, was certificated to inspect vessels applying for ship's registry in the United Kingdom. Of course, since I utilised West Caribbean British Dependent Territories, by the time the documents reached Cardiff, the vessel's smuggling ventures had already occurred.
• Forming Florida corporations for criminal clients who wished to open legitimate businesses as a cover for their illicit activities, often, the companies would be dissolved the following year for failure to file Annual Reports. That way, the identities of the beneficial owners, and even the officers & directors, never appeared on record.
• Checking on whether clients' associates had been recently arrested; criminal clients are forever worried that suppliers or customers will, when looking at possible long prison sentences, turn on their close associates. Such things as favourable bond arrangements, or the release of an individual who would otherwise be held in pretrial detention, were clues to his or her cooperation with the authorities, and the possibility that they would be out there, wired for sound, attempting to "sting" the clients, or even yours truly, as I have earlier detailed in this story.
• Showing up at Customs to learn whether a client's seized vessel was caught with contraband, merely residue, or some other violation which would preclude its release. Of course, when it was sold, it could be bought at government auction by front-men, and pressed into service once again.

Lunch would usually be at a downtown bar which was near enough to US Customs headquarters to bring in my then adversaries. Whilst they were rarely rude, their dislike of me for my covert role surfaced at times. Clients, or lawyers working with me on the defence of clients in criminal cases, would meet me there.  

Some afternoons were travel preparation; that meant visiting clients and picking up either cash or non-bearer monetary instruments, and making last-minute arrangements to obtain a ticket for a trip later that afternoon to the tax havens of the Caribbean. If that was the case, I would show up for a flight filled with casino-bound Americans, young honeymooners, and West Indians going home. Since they were wearing tacky tourist garb, I did the same, and either body-packed or transported the money in a small carry-on bag.

At no time during the decade that I flew the "friendly skies" was I ever detained outbound, nor did I ever lose any money or monetary instruments to law enforcement. Whilst the screening technology stopped any and all metallic items, it never detected all that paper money, from which the bands had always been removed.

At the other end was St.Maarten, famous for having no Customs, and only perfunctory Immigration, and my bag and its contents entered the country without notice. A quick trip to a quiet  Dutch hotel, and the package was safely tucked in somewhere amongst the roof tiles in my room.

The day came to an end with some conservative gambling at the casino, or some Caribbean music and drinks at a local watering hole adjacent to the harbour. To all intents and purposes, I was just another tired traveling businessman catching his breath at the end of a long day. In reality, today was only prologue for the morning's maritime money laundering run into the colourful tax havens and back.

Next Week: Showtime.