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The lengthy feature story hit Pfizer hard, indicating that the drug company had come to New London with a plan to transform the city. “But redeveloping scores of acres in Fort Trumbull, next to Pfizer’s own 24-acre site, would require evicting many longtime residents,” the Journal reported.

Stung by what he’d read, O’Shea put down the paper in disgust. As the vice president of operations and public affairs for Pfizer’s research division, O’Shea had carefully followed all the stories about the development project in the local press. Although he hadn’t liked all the controversy, none of it had concerned him too much as long as it was largely confined to the Day and other Connecticut papers. After all, investors, shareholders, and Pfizer’s corporate executives in New York didn’t read the Day. But they all read the Wall Street Journal. The fact that the nation’s leading financial paper had fingered Pfizer as the corporation behind the city’s efforts to drive people from their homes in Fort Trumbull had O’Shea steaming.

Smart, shrewd, and cautious, O’Shea had spent four years trying to protect Pfizer from guilt by association with the NLDC and its use of eminent domain. But his task had been made difficult by the close association between George Milne and Claire Gaudiani. Her style and the NLDC’s reputation made O’Shea bristle.

When he had first learned that Milne was considering New London as a development site, O’Shea had had serious reservations. In retrospect, however, O’Shea had come to view Milne’s decision as a brilliant one. When Pfizer had merged with Warner-Lambert, the company had had to centralize a wide variety of business operations, and the New London site suddenly provided the company great flexibility.

He also took satisfaction in Judge Corradino’s conclusion that Pfizer had not directed the NLDC to use eminent domain. But now he had to deal with the Wall Street Journal’s suggestion to the contrary.

On a notepad, O’Shea listed his complaints. Then he telephoned one of Pfizer’s attorneys, saying they needed to address these issues with the paper’s editors. The attorney agreed. O’Shea called the Journal and demanded a face-to-face meeting. A few days later he traveled with an attorney to the paper’s offices in lower Manhattan. In a meeting with Lucette Lagnado and her editors, O’Shea unloaded, arguing the story was plagued by errors and all kinds of innuendos.

“I didn’t like that whenever the NLDC did something our name was attached to it,” O’Shea said later. “We had a very specific purpose in mind. The state and the city and the NLDC helped us with our purpose, and we did what we committed to do. Everything else was peripheral and not Pfizer’s responsibility. We were interested bystanders.”

O’Shea wanted the Journal to publish a retraction or a clarification. But the paper declined, standing behind the reporting of Lagnado, a longtime, award-winning journalist. Instead, the paper agreed to publish a letter to the editor from O’Shea.

In his letter, O’Shea said he was “saddened and insulted” by the story and complained that “facts were obscured in favor of innuendo.” It was published ten days later. In protest, O’Shea stopped reading the Journal and started reading the New York Times.

Money. Every time she looked at her checkbook, Susette realized she didn’t have enough of it. Her nursing shifts were barely paying her enough for the necessities. LeBlanc had steady work. But as a stonemason in business for himself, he had to hustle just to make enough to pay the bills, too. They knew they needed a little extra income.

Susette had heard that the city was looking to hire a nurse to help children with nutrition and testing for lead poisoning. She and LeBlanc figured it was worth a shot. She applied for the part-time position. When the city received her application, some officials were unsure what to do. They brought the application to Tom Londregan for advice.

Londregan had to smile. He knew what some people in City Hall were thinking—First