And it’s not too late to sneak this storyline into the next season of Law & Order*:

A kiddie birthday party aboard a boat took a macabre turn yesterday when its pint-sized passengers spotted a corpse floating in the Hudson off Manhattan’s Pier 40.

The shocked parents of birthday girl Chloe Carvajal, 3, told The Post that they had shelled out $1,500 for the round-trip jaunt around the Statue of Liberty for about 40 guests, including at least 15 youngsters.

They were horrified when the rug rats got a premature lesson in crime-scene investigation at around 1 p.m.

“There were children there who saw the body, and they were crying,” said the girl’s mother, Jill Carvajal, 37. “The boat was circling the body.”

Chloe’s dad, Carlos Carvajal, 36, a commercial litigation lawyer, added, “At least 15 kids saw this. The kids were screaming, crying, ‘Mommy! What’s going on? What is that?’

“It was the cruise from hell. It was like out of a movie. You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

. . .

The man was later ID’d by police as Michael Dukes, 30, of Brooklyn. They had no further details.

Shielding the kids, including Chloe’s sister, Alexandra, 4, only got more difficult when the ship, the Queen of Hearts, circled the corpse for about 20 minutes, the Carvajals said.

“She [Alexandra] is asking me [about it], and I’m trying to usher her in,” said Carlos Carvajal. “I said the boat just hit something.”

See also: Other bad old days.

*They just need 101 days.