Part 32 (1/2)

Bullock liked Angelo's approach. He agreed to discuss the idea with his clients.

Susette and Michael Cristofaro traveled to Was.h.i.+ngton in mid-June to attend a dinner recognizing the achievements of the Castle Coalition. Heavy hitters, from bank CEOs to national media figures, were on hand, and Susette had agreed to be the keynote speaker. All these important people wanted their picture taken with Susette. When it was over, Susette told Bullock she wanted to talk with him alone in the hotel lobby.

She had been doing a lot of thinking. She knew the city wasn't going to let her stay in the neighborhood. And with everyone else leaving, she no longer wanted to stay. To her, loneliness was worse than illness.

”You know ...” she said, her voice trailing off as she looked up at the ceiling.

Bullock put his hand on her knee. ”It's okay,” he whispered.

”This is hard.”

”Tell me what you are thinking.”

She lowered her eyes. ”I'm not quitting,” she said. ”I have an idea.”

She wanted to leave Fort Trumbull and take her home with her. The city could have her land. But she wasn't giving up her house, not to them at least. She figured the structure could be moved to a location outside the Fort Trumbull area.

Bullock was intrigued. By saving Susette's house and relocating it elsewhere, it could become a historic landmark and a fitting tribute to the historic battle they had waged. It could even become a museum serving an educational purpose. Best of all, it would deny some NLDC and city officials the victory they l.u.s.ted after most, the demolition of Susette's emblematic pink house.

Susette confided she had another reason for choosing this course. The calls from angry fanatics were increasing, along with their rhetoric of violent opposition. If she stayed put and the city tried to force her out, Susette feared what might happen.

The inst.i.tute had the same concerns. They had garnered a lot of goodwill through litigation and lawful civil disobedience. A violent standoff would mar the entire effort.

If the state would compensate her enough to find another home and also pay for the relocation of her pink house, she'd agree to leave the neighborhood. She had only one condition: she would not settle until the city and the state took care of the Cristofaro family.

The Cristofaro family had come up with its own conditions for leaving. First, they wanted to take some of the shrubs from the property; Pasquale Cristofaro had transplanted the shrubs decades earlier when the city had taken his first house through eminent domain. Second, they wanted a plaque erected in the fort neighborhood in honor of Margherita Cristofaro, the family matriarch who had died during the battle with the city. And third, if the city ended up building new upscale housing where their homes had once stood, the family wanted an exclusive right to purchase one at a fixed price so it could return to the neighborhood.

Bullock brought these terms and conditions to Ron Angelo.

He had heard all the rumors: Susette was impossible to deal with. She was greedy. She was holding out for more money.

Ron Angelo was on his way to her house to find out for himself. Before closing any deal, he wanted to sit down with her face-to-face, something no one in the Rell administration had ever bothered to do.

When he arrived, Susette met him at the door. ”This is my son Willis,” she said, introducing her twenty-eight-year-old son, a student working on his master's degree in biology. ”He'll be the one you're going to talk to.”

”My mother's done talking,” Willis said.

Angelo said he understood. Susette looked like a woman carrying the weight of the world.

The three of them sat down. Willis got right to the bottom line. ”This is what my mother wants,” he said. ”She has a little house on a little hill overlooking the water. And that's what she's going to end up with.”

It was simple. She wanted the deed back to her pink house and enough money to move it outside the fort and establish it as a historic site. And she wanted enough money to purchase a home that resembled what she'd be leaving behind.

”You gotta understand,” Willis told Angelo. ”This is no longer about my mother. The whole country is watching to see whether she stays and gets dragged out. If you knew my mother, you'd understand that she says what she means, and she means what she says. My mother isn't afraid of you or anybody else.”

Angelo said he understood, and he apologized. But he wanted Susette to understand something too. The Rell administration had inherited this mess from the Rowland administration. Angelo hadn't chosen the job of picking up the pieces. Rather it had been dumped in his lap.

”Is your mother proud of you for the job you're doing?” Susette asked.

Angelo didn't take offense. Instead, he revealed something. His daughter in middle school was doing a project on the case and she sided with the homeowners. She wasn't pleased with her father.

His honesty impressed Susette.

Susette's grit impressed Angelo. n.o.body knew what it felt like to walk in her shoes, he knew. By the time he left her house, he decided he wanted to go to bat for her.

Initially, Tom Londregan and the city council had the same response when Angelo first told them what Susette and Michael Cristofaro wanted: ”No way.” They were not interested in seeing Susette's house saved, and they sure as h.e.l.l didn't want the Cristofaro family to move back into the neighborhood when or if high-end housing went up. And the city didn't want to see them get as much money as the state seemed willing to pay them.

Bullock said that Susette and Michael Cristofaro had a simple response if their demands were not met: Bring on the marshals.

Then the council reflected. The NLDC had had enough and wanted out at any cost. Mayor Sabilia feared Susette wouldn't go. And Londregan knew that Angelo held a trump card: Although the state couldn't force the city to settle, it could make life very difficult when the city tried to proceed with the development. Virtually every aspect of the plan required state sign-offs from the Department of Economic and Community Development and the Department of Environmental Protection. If the city wanted to go forward, it was time to play ball.

Finally, the city said okay.

June 30, 2006 Susette signed a settlement contract ent.i.tling her to $442,000 for her building lot. She could use her own money to pay for her house to be disa.s.sembled, relocated, and rebuilt on a private lot elsewhere in the city. Avner Gregory, who had done original restoration work on the house decades earlier, donated a lot for the reconstruction and offered to act as the home's caretaker.

Michael Cristofaro received $475,000, and the city also met the other three terms he had set.

Shortly after signing the papers, Angelo and Susette and Bullock ran into each other on the street in New London. The state had forked out $4.1 million to settle with six holdouts. ”It was expensive,” Angelo admitted. ”It wasn't pretty. But it worked.”

There was no way Susette would consider living in New London again. In the hunt for a place to live, she drove across the Thames River into Groton and started driving up and down waterfront streets in search of ”For Sale” signs. Coming down a small side street, she saw a sign that read, ”FOR SALE BY OWNER” in front of a small bungalow. The property ab.u.t.ted historic Fort Griswold, which, like Fort Trumbull, had been attacked by Benedict Arnold for the British in the Revolutionary War. It was almost directly across the river from Fort Trumbull.

Susette parked the car and approached the house. From the doorstep, she could see her old neighborhood across the water. She rang the doorbell.

An Asian man answered.

”Is your house still for sale?” she asked.

”Yes,” said the man, eager to describe his modest three-bedroom house. It needed renovation, and his asking price was $224,000.

Even without inspecting she could see the place needed a lot of work. But she knew it was what she wanted: a little house on a little hill overlooking the water. She knew right away she was going to buy this house.

Suddenly a smile swept across the man's face. ”Hey, I know who you are,” he said. ”You're the lady from right over there.” He pointed across the river to the Fort Trumbull area.

Susette grinned and nodded.

”I read about you all the time in the newspaper,” he said. ”Come in. Come in.”

EPILOGUE.

In the summer of 2007, Susette's pink house was successfully disa.s.sembled-board by board-and moved elsewhere in the city, on Avner Gregory's land. A year later the Inst.i.tute for Justice held a ceremony, officially dedicating the house as a historic landmark. A plaque in the front yard denotes the importance of the little pink house that changed the country. It remains an emblem of the fight waged in Fort Trumbull and other places throughout the country.

Susette bought and renovated the small house next to Fort Griswold. She lives there with Tim LeBlanc, who has completed a miraculous recovery from his accident. Susette still works two jobs as a nurse, one for the hospital and one for the City of New London. She set aside the remainder of her settlement money for her five sons.