“Jim,” I began, “look, I understand completely if you want out now. The stock has collapsed and your options are worthless. Maria thinks it’s hopeless. And now we’re really going to get dragged through the mud. We might go bankrupt. Maybe it’ll turn out we did do something wrong. There’s no upside for you. The main thing you’ve got is your reputation. Why give up something it took a lifetime to build? You could go back to law and lobbying and be respected and make millions. Nobody’ll ever hold it against you that you mistakenly joined a firm that was already having problems. But if you stick with us, whatever happens to us is gonna happen to you. So, if I were you, I’d resign now.”

“No way,” Jim said. “When I signed on as president, I meant it. This is my company. This is my life. This is just a huge injustice, and we can’t let it happen. I’m with you guys. We can fight this. Whatever happens, it happens to all of us together.”

They say you never know who your friends are till the going gets tough. Well, I might not have had the greatest prospects, but I had some unbelievable friends. Howie wasn’t giving up. Jim wasn’t giving up. In time, all our top people would decide to stay and fight.

This was another visit from my imaginary monster the Meligoth. He stands for all evil, and for some reason, he’s made it his personal obsession to go out after me. Every day he tries different ploys. Sometimes he makes me run out of gas, other times he makes major clients quit; now he was starting devastating rumors. Naturally, the Meligoth always thinks that with all his power, he’s finally beaten me once and for all. And then, just when he’s celebrating, I pull myself together, kick him in the head, start to beat his brains in, and the whole thing starts again. Every morning when I go to work, my wife sends me off by saying, “Go slay the Meligoth.”

I don’t have that many great attributes, but I am unbelievably resilient. That’s why the Meligoth chose me as his earthly sparring partner. The Meligoth must surely have thought at this point that he’d finally won. He’d isolated me completely and was about to finish me off. Instead, he now found out he was up against Jim, Howie, me, and all of IDT, and we weren’t going gently into the good night. Ah, if only he could get the pay-per-view rights on this fight, he could just retire and let some junior Meligoth take over.

Jim began with the New Jersey attorney general’s office, where he had some influence. Prior to the Republicans taking control of the state government, Jim was their last unsuccessful candidate for governor. To Republicans, he was like a founding father, and the Republicans now ran the attorney general’s office. Not only that, but a felony had been committed. All investigations were supposed to be strictly confidential. If someone in the attorney general’s office was passing confidential information to an outside PI agency, well, that was a crime. I mean, if the attorney general’s office had turned crooked, then there was no rule of law.

A week later the attorney general came back with good news. The office had investigated everyone and they were sure no one had talked. Not only that, but there was nothing to talk about. The matter with the states was being concluded, and there was no federal involvement. They were sure of it. The feds had not contacted them on this matter.