Rust-colored steel containers, each the size of a boxcar on a freight train, were stacked by the dozens and lined up in rows for acre after acre in the dark shipyard. Pierre Thibodaux’s limousine was stopped at the gate by a night watchman, who flashed his beam at the two of us in the backseat. Thibodaux’s French accent was lost on the weary sentry, who was probably coming to the end of his shift as the hour approached midnight.

“Say what?”

“We are here to meet some people from the Metropolitan Museum, somewhere in-”

I leaned forward and folded back the leather cover on my wallet, holding my gold and blue badge under the nose of the guard. “I’m Alexandra Cooper, district attorney’s office. There are some detectives inside the yard who are waiting for us.”

I checked the rear page of the evening’s program, on which I had scribbled down the location Mike Chapman had given to me when I called him from my cell phone fifteen minutes earlier. “They’re in front of lot G-eight. Which way is that?”

The watchman pressed the buzzer that unlocked the chain-link fence and pointed his finger, illuminated by the lighted end of his cigarette. “Go to your left, couple of hundred yards. Can’t miss the big oranges on the side of the stack of Tropicana containers. Hang a right and drive in past them. Your cops are already there.”

The fact that the freight yard happened to be across the river from Manhattan in Newark, New Jersey, hadn’t put Chapman off in the least. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had control of the property, so he figured it was worth his time to explore the situation. Any fears that my New York County identification would not serve to get us inside were short-lived.