SIN AND CIVILITY

The fish were dead. Not all of them. But most. It was totally unacceptable.

Alan Lewis put the phone down in the cradle the only way he knew how. He slammed it. The crash-ding sound resonated in his office on the 106th floor of the North Tower, Building One, of the World Trade Center. Sitting in the room, which was laced with cigarette smoke, was his boss, Joe Baum. Lewis had to act. He picked up the phone again and dialed the line to the commissary in the B-level, 107 floors below him.

"What do you want, Al?" asked Dennis Sweeney, the usually reliable director of operations who ran Central Services, the vast complex of kitchens, providers, and transport services that connected the twenty-two restaurants in nine different locations on various floors of the Twin Towers, from the central docking station in the garage all the way up to the top. Sweeney and Lewis got along well enough, but Lewis had a way of leaning on people. He was Baum's bulldog. Not that Baum needed one. For those who worked under Baum, it was hard not to do everything within one's power to satisfy him. Whether that was out of fear or respect or just self-preservation, it didn't really matter.

It was Lewis's role to carry out Joe Baum's wishes, no matter how impossible, bizarre, or indiscernible. Lewis, perhaps more than anyone, understood Baum. They had met at Cornell and risen together to the top of Restaurant Associates in its heyday, when Baum made his name as the greatest restaurateur in the country. What it took for Baum to get there probably showed more on Lewis's face than it did on Baum's. Lewis had weathered some personal bad luck and an ocean's worth of Baum storms, and you had to feel bad for the guy, except when he was tearing into someone himself.

Joe Baum's presence could electrify or freeze a room, depending on his mood. He carried himself like a king. He was a hefty five-foot-eight with a neatly thinning, cropped crown of receding hair, but he led with his chin and eyes, so sharp and challenging. His thick, solemn eyebrows arched with intelligence and reprobation.

He would crack wise whether he was charming or criticizing you, or sometimes both. And the smoking. He'd always have a menthol cigarette or cigar or pipe in hand, sometimes while another smoldered in an ashtray.

Sweeney worked for Baum as well, but because of the World Trade Center's byzantine food services hierarchical structure, Sweeney was in the role of representing Central Services, which was providing the fish to Baum's crown jewel, Windows on the World. And Lewis was speaking on behalf of Windows, so he was in the driver's seat.

"Dennis, I just heard from André. The trout are dead. What the fuck are you trying to pull?" Lewis's voice rose steadily with each word. "We need them alive. You know that. The dish can't be served if they come in dead. Cut this shit out. Get it right the next time."

The first time it happened, Sweeney was in his office. Of the forty or so rainbow trout, about half arrived in the kitchen dead. This time, he made sure to go down to the docking station when his provider, an upstate guy in a truck, arrived, having called him an hour earlier to tell him he was on his way. Unlike the rest of the restaurant's seafood, which came from the Fulton Fish Market just down the street, these trout were on special order.

Sweeney had counted the fish himself, not an easy task, considering they were still flipping and flopping around. As the numbers guy, the one counting costs and constantly trying to reel Baum in, it was a fun switch getting his hands wet.

One by one, he dropped three dozen trout into water in the large blue garbage can. It's what they used for fish. The green can was for the vegetables, and the red one was for the meat. The thirty-two-gallon plastic cans weren't pretty, but they didn't need to be.

The fish were alive when they entered the elevator — Sweeney knew that much. He saw them go in, the can pressed against the heavily padded walls, stuck among other containers that were destined for various food service locations spread throughout the World Trade Center — an area so large, it had its own zip code.

He'd packed them with ice this time. Could the provider have switched the fish? Or did someone kill them on the way up? In the restaurant business, anything could happen. That's why they locked the steaks for the ride up. And it's why they counted them a second time when they arrived. Wouldn't want those to disappear. But someone killing fish didn't make sense.

Still, everyone was on edge. The opening of Windows was just weeks away, and Joe Baum wanted his new restaurant to serve Truite au bleu, or, blue trout.

The preparation of the dish is straightforward. What matters most is the freshness of the fish, because when the fish is alive, it is coated in slime that is integral to its preparation. You take the breathing fish, bludgeon it unconscious in the kitchen by slamming it on the counter, gut it, and then drop it into boiling court bouillon, a flavorful stock, with vinegar and salt, which turns the trout a luminous tinge of blue. Served with butter, salt, lemon, boiled potatoes, and ground pepper, it's hard to beat. The subtle, wet-earth taste of the fish is perfectly balanced by the butter, flavorful broth, salt, and the acid of the lemon.

That was why Baum needed the fish to be swimming in tanks in the kitchen. He was planning on serving blue trout at the opening. It had been printed in the advertising material. It had to happen.

Truite au bleu w as pure theater, but it was also simple, fresh, Good-tasting food with origins in Continental Europe. It was perfect for Windows,...