The Informant

The episode opens at the station where things seem to be rather wilder than usual. La Guardia is still interested in Lacey's mother-in-law. Samuels is in a bad mood, and Lacey has to ask him about allowing Harve Jr. into the station for a school project.

There's a problem with someone selling PCP to high school kids on school property, and they haven't been able to catch him/them. Cagney and Lacey are working on the case, and they are going to have to use an informant, whether they want to or not. They meet the informant and a cop who works with him.

At the station the informant, a teen-age boy, acts like he wants to work with the police a lot. His “cover” is almost blown in the station. They go to the school to get the informant enrolled as a student.

The scene shifts to later at Cagney and Harvey's; they are putting up wallpaper. Harve Jr. asks them if he has permission to come to the station, but she hasn't checked with Samuels yet.

Cagney and Lacey meet with the informant and he claims he knows who the dealer for PCP is at the school. Cagney doesn't think the informant is becoming reformed, but Lacey thinks he is. Cagney and Lacey are told that a buy is going down so they go to that while Harve Jr. stays at the station talking to La Guardia.

They go to the informant's apartment. The kid claims he got burned on the drug buy. They go to a place that is reported as having a “minty smell” and might be a drug-making place, but it's someone claiming to be an herbal healer.

The informant tells them about a drug buy that is going down. It turns out the drug buy involved two federal agents who were working on a legitimate case. Cagney thinks the kid set them up, and Lacey doesn't.

They get a report of a kid from the school who used PCP and went through a glass window or door. The kid refuses to tell them who gave him the PCP. The informant was the one who gave him the drugs, supposedly.

The catch the kid at an arcade and chase him when he tries to run away. He claims he can give them photos he took of a major drug dealer's book of names.

They go over information the kid provided them, and they find out the herbal healer that they went to earlier is probably the person making the PCP. They break up the entire operation.

They talk to the father of the kid who went through the window and he wants Matt, the informant, prosecuted. They explain that Matt is going to go free because of the information he provided them. The kid gave his info to another cop, though. At least that way Cagney and Lacey won't have to blame themselves for the kid going free.