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Eleven days after Levin submitted his proposal, Ellef awarded him the contract, along with a $65,000 up-front payment. Effective April 21, 1997, Jay Levin answered to Peter Ellef, who answered to Governor John Rowland.

3

THIS OLD HOUSE

Summer 1997

Real-estate agent Geoff Haussman had just obtained his broker’s license. He had yet to sell his first house when the phone rang in his agency’s main office on a slow Saturday morning. Haussman picked up and identified himself.

“Hi,” said the person on the other end. “My name is Susette Kelo, and I want to look at the house at 8 East Street in New London.”

Unfamiliar with the property, Haussman put her on hold and grabbed a listing sheet. It indicated the house was 107 years old and had a stone foundation and an unfinished basement. Total living space amounted to barely 1,100 square feet, with just two rooms on the first floor—a kitchen and living room—and two bedrooms upstairs. Each floor had a bathroom. The asking price had been reduced to $59,000 after the place had sat on the market for years.

Haussman got back on the line and asked Susette when she wanted to see the house.

“Today,” she said.

“Okay, great,” he said. “Let me give you directions.”

“You don’t need to give me directions. I’m already here.”

“You’re at the house now?”

“I’m standing in front of it.”

Haussman said he’d be right over.

Before leaving the office, he told a colleague where he was headed. The colleague joked that he was going to show the house that no one could sell.

Waiting for Haussman to arrive, Susette put on some gardening gloves and took a pair of hedge clippers from her car. In sandals and shorts, she carved a path through the overgrown brush that blocked the front steps to the house. Eager to reach the door, Susette ignored the thorns that scraped the tops of her feet and the bottoms of her legs.

Haussman pulled up and removed the lockbox on the front door. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

“I’ll be all right.”

Just inside, a narrow staircase led to the second floor. Susette scooted past it and into the dark, empty front room. Haussman went through the house, looking for light switches.

Susette pulled back the old, drab curtains covering the front windows. Sunlight immediately flooded the room, revealing a breathtaking view of the water and of boats sailing on the Thames River.

Overcome by an instant, strange sense of belonging, Susette stared out the window. She felt like she had been there all her life. This house is calling me, she told herself.

Embarrassed, Haussman emerged from the unfinished basement, trying to figure out how to talk up a house he felt needed to be demolished.

“There’s not much to see here,” he said.

She kept looking out the window.

The rooms are small, he reported. Besides being unfinished, the basement had a boulder in it. The kitchen had only an old gas stove.

“I want to buy this house,” she said, her back to him.

“This place?”

She spun around. “Yes, this place.”

Haussman suggested she consider some other options and offered to show her other listings.

“No,” she said, determined to defend the house, “I really like this place. This is my house.”

Haussman hesitated. For more than a year his agency had been unable to talk anybody into looking at 8 East Street, much less buy it. Now he couldn’t talk Susette out of leaving the place alone.

“Look,” he said, “if you are going to buy it, you need to at least see what you’re buying.”

“That’s fine. But I’m not changing my mind.”

She followed him upstairs. Both bedrooms felt cramped, but one of them offered an even better view of the water than the living room did.

This is my room, she decided.

Without even bothering to inspect the basement, she offered $42,000 for the house, $17,000 below asking price. She had nothing to lose; the house had been on the market for years without an offer.

Haussman escorted Susette out, locked up, and hustled back to his office to write up a contract.

“I sold the