In the interviews, Garrison confirmed that he had received a hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars’ worth of checks from Alfortish. Federal authorities realized that, with Garrison’s critical evidence, they could construct a major case. On one level, the slammer conspiracy was an amusing example of New Orleans chicanery at its most baroque, a tale of literal highway robbery so antic and absurd that it seemed like the plot of an Elmore Leonard novel. But, on a deeper level, it was an awful parable of economic desperation in twenty-first-century America. Scores of poor Black Louisianans had volunteered for what was effectively Russian roulette, risking their own lives and the lives of their loved ones in the hope of a onetime payout. The attorneys, by contrast, were well educated and mostly white, and would almost certainly have been loath to climb into a car with Garrison and go looking for a truck to hit. Of course, the lawyers had reaped the bulk of the financial rewards. Motta routinely demanded six- or seven-figure settlements, and contingency fees often ran as high as forty per cent. Actual payments to clients, however, could take years to come through, when they came through at all.
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