TEASER

On Santa Monica Pier, the Amazing Maleeni starts to perform his magic show. He starts with the ball-cup trick thing explaining the history of it as he goes. From the audience (Billy LaBonge) starts telling him that he stinks and to do some real magic. Maleeni says that he will do a dangerous trick, which it appears costs him his life. He starts turning his head, and turns it 360 degrees! (To describe this, it looks kind of morphed with the imaging they used. His head kind of looks like its floating after.) The audience is impressed; LaBonge is not.

One of Maleeni's workers comes up to the driver's seat of his van to give him his pay. Maleeni doesn't respond, so he taps him. Maleeni's head, clean cut, falls to the ground.

ACT ONE

Mulder and Scully are on the case. Mulder does not think that Maleeni (Arnold Pinchbeck) was murdered. They check someone's video camera who was lucky enough to get the act on tape.

The tape shows Maleeni's head turn for the end of the act. They mention that the heckler was not satisfied - Scully thinks he could be the murderer, but they have no idea who he is.

Suddenly Scully notices something in the video and rewinds it. She sees LaBonge throwing away a cup.

SCULLY: The hand may be quicker than the eye. But it still leaves fingerprints.

They go to see LaBonge. He performs small magic tricks for them (to impress Scully? I don't know yet), saying that Maleeni was an amateur. He crouches on the floor and does the "hand trick" where he appears to twist his arm around 360 degrees (I can do that!).

He tells them that Maleeni had gambling debts and that maybe someone went after him.

When the agents leave, he calls them back, holding up their badges to them. Scully thinks that he could have killed Maleeni because of professional jealousy.

SCULLY: All right, I'm stumped. I think I'm supposed to be.

Scully's autopsy on Maleeni reveals that his head was attached (barely) with spirit gum which is all around the edge of the head. She reveals to Mulder that Maleeni appears to have died from a heart attack - over a month ago. She detects signs of refridgeration.

MULDER: So, basically, he died of a heart attack. Someone crept up nehind him. Sawed his head off. Glued it back all within the space of 30 seconds. That make sense to you?
SCULLY: No, it doesn't, which makes it even stranger still. Because as far as I can tell, this body has been dead for over a month. I see signs of refrigeration.
MULDER: And, yet, he performed yesterday. What a trouper!
SCULLY: Well, somebody performed yesterday...

LaBonge goes to find Cissy Alvarez. Alvarez is covered with tattoos. He served time with LaBonge in jail years ago. He tells him that he made LaBonge's head fall off. He says that he can get the $20,000 that Maleeni owed to Alvarez back, times ten. He tells him that all he has to do is help him perform magic. He lights his own hand on fire revealing Alvarez's wallet, asking him if he wants to hear more.

ACT TWO

Mulder and Scully go to visit Maleeni's twin brother. They think that he probably helped his brother perform the trick one last time. He had been a magician before as well, but had quit. It seems though that he has an alibi as he was in a car accident in Mexico. He moves backwards and we can see that he is in a wheel chair. He has no legs. He tells them that it was a very bad accident.

Mulder and Scully bring 'the expert' LaBonge in to go through Maleeni's stuff, in hopes of finding some clues. He tells them that the trick would have been easy. He (whoever performed) had somebody that looked like Maleeni perform, diverted the audience's attention, and pulled the body out. He tells them that he would have easily hid it under the (fake) floor.

LaBonge pulls the panels of the floor of the van up to reveal that the floor is solid.

Mulder finds a note about Maleeni oweing someone $20,000.

A man working at the bank where Maleeni’s brother works takes money out of a safe.

The cop talks to Pinchbeck, who asks about his gun. He tells him that after the accident, he was thinking about buying one. The cop hands it to him and he looks it over.

Alvarez comes into Pinchbeck’s office and threatens him, telling him that he better pay him back the money that his brother owed to him.

The cops are driving when they hear something in the back of the truck. They stop, and the one goes around, gun in hand, and opens up the back. A man, covered in tattoos springs out. The cop shoots him four times, but he disappears.

The camera pans behind where we see LaBonge washing fake tattoos off of his hands.

ACT THREE

Mulder and Scully go to the pool hall to talk to Alvarez. They show him the marker for Pinchbeck’s debt for poker, but at first he says that it isn’t his. They tell him that they found it in Pinchbeck’s van, with his fingerprints on it. He tells him that he would have no reason to kill him, because if he did, he wouldn’t get his money. They want to know why he would bet at poker with a magician, but he tells them that he didn’t know what he was, and that he was bad at poker. Scully tells him not to leave town.

After being out of the building, Mulder wants to know why Pinchbeck wasn’t good at poker if he was a magician, but she tells him that LaBonge said he wasn’t a good magician. He tells Scully that magic is all about misdirection.

He performs a magic trick for her, using an ordinary quarter, which he makes seem to jump into his other hand. Then, he puts his hand over her nose and tells her to blow. She humors him and says "ah-choo" and he makes it fall into his hand. He calls himself the great Muldeeni. He tells her that he thinks they are being led around. She tells him that Maleeni is already dead. He tells her that she also thought that he had the quarter in his other hand.

Mulder and Scully pull away.

On the other side of the street, LaBonge calls for help and says that someone has a gun and is threatening him. He pretends that he has to talk quietly because someone is near. He leaves the phone hanging off the hook as he heads back over to the pool hall.

In the pool hall, Alvarez is looking through his wallet notepad and notices that a page (the marker for the money Maleeni owed him) has been torn out. He knows LaBonge took it.

When LaBonge comes in, Alvarez curses at him and threatens him. LaBonge pulls out a gun to keep them back, and backs out of the building.

When he gets outside, the cops pull up and arrest him for having the gun. It falls to the ground, and the little "bang" flag pops out.

In his office, Pinchbeck is typing something on his computer when Mulder and Scully come in. Scully tells him that they need to talk to him, but he says that he is busy. Mulder grabs his wheelchair and wheels him into the other room anyway.

Once in the other room, Mulder tells Pinchbeck at it’s all about misdirection. Then, Mulder calls Pinchbeck the Amazing Maleeni and tilts his chair, knocking him on the floor. Scully cries out in surprise, but it seems Mulder knew what he was doing. Pinchbeck’s legs are fine. Pinchbeck takes off his neck brace from the ‘accident’ and says that he had Mulder fooled.

Pinchbeck/Maleeni tells them that he did what he did because he feared for his life. He wasn’t proud of what he did, but he owed a lot of money that he couldn’t pay back.

Scully asks him why he didn’t just cheat at the game because he could have one. He gets offended and pulls four aces out of the deck and says that he doesn’t cheat at cards.

Maleeni explains that he went to his brother for a loan and found him dead, his body still warm. He saw in him everything that he had sought to accomplish but hadn’t. He then saw it as a way that he could disappear.

He impersonated his brother and called the bank saying that he needed a vacation and was going to Mexico. This provided his alibi. He then posed as an amputee to stop any suspicion that he wasn’t his brother. He adds that he also did it because he likes the attention he gets from the women working there.

He says that went to Santa Monica Pier and performed his last trick. He agrees that he wanted to always be remembered by it.

Mulder pulls out handcuffs and cuffs him, telling him that he still thinks he has a few tricks up his sleeves.

Mulder and Scully look around for clues. Mulder suspects there Pinchbeck had access to the electronic file transfers and had stolen money that way. The worker tells him that Maleeni didn’t have access to it. Mulder wants him to check the records, but he tells him that he would need his badge number and thumbprint, and probably a supeonea. He pulls however pulls up the record of transfers at least from that computer, but nothing is there.

Maleeni takes the hand cuffs off and dangles them in front of Mulder.

Scully asks about the robbery that took place the day before. He tells her that that wasn’t them, but rather the armored transport service they deal with. He tells her that no money was taken. Scully tells him that Pinchbeck was the employee who signed out the truck, so he knew about the delivery schedule.

They take Maleeni into custody.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD STATION
Maleeni is put in a jail cell. He hears knocking from the other side of the wall, and he knocks back. It's LaBonge. He asks Pinchbeck how it went, and he replies that it went swimmingly. LaBonge tells him "abracadabra."

ACT FOUR

CRADOCK MARINE BANK
9:04 AM
At the bank, the employee and the cops open the giant safe. It’s empty.

Mulder and Scully arrive. Scully tells Mulder that Pinchbeck couldn’t have done it since he was in jail.

The employee brings the agents over to watch the video tapes at the bank. During the robbery, the cameras went off, but that’s not what he wants them to see. Two days ago someone came into the bank. We see that it’s Alvarez. The cop says that it is the man who tried to rob his truck – he recognizes the tattoos.

Mulder and Scully go to the pool hall. Alvarez is handcuffed. He’s complaining that he didn’t do anything. Mulder looks around and notices a panel on the ceiling partially off. He knocks it with a cue stick and money bags fall out. He yells that he was framed. He tells them that the magician did it – not the dead one, but the younger one – LaBonge.

A cop lets LaBonge and Pinchbeck out of their cells, saying that they made bail. He takes them over to see Mulder and Scully.

Mulder congratulates them, and says that Alvarez was caught with the money. Maleeni then congratulates Mulder. They tells him that Alvarez will need a good lawyer. Alvarez was so obviously guilty. He’s up the creek, like the two of them. Pinchbeck says that he doesn’t follow. Mulder tells them that he has no evidence, but he does have a theory.

Mulder tells him he thinks that when Pinchbeck found his twin brother dead, it gave him and his protege LaBonge a golden opportunity. Maleeni tells Mulder that he hates LaBonge, but Scully says that that is what he wanted them to think.

Mulder tells LaBonge that he knows he wanted revenge on the man that treated him horribly when he was in prison – Alvarez.

Scully says that it was a setup from the beginning. Maleeni purposely lost poker to Alvarez, and was an opportunity for LaBonge to get in with Alvarez, once he thought Maleeni was dead. She says that LaBonge purposely dropped the paper saying that Maleeni owed $20,000 for them to find. They used Alvarez’s greed in order to ensnare him, and then orchestrated the attempted bank robbery in order to implicate him.

Mulder goes on to say that it was LaBonge who was disguised as Alvarez in the armored truck. Somehow Pinchbeck got a hold of the cop’s gun and switched the clip to one with blank bullets (We see a flash back of the guard letting Maleeni look at his gun).

Scully adds that the night before, the two of them robbed the bank and planted the money in Alvarez’s place.

LaBonge tells them that they have an alibi – they were in jail. Mulder says that it’s the best alibi in the world, and that he thinks that is why they got arrested in the first place. They stole the guards keys and left the jail, stole the money at the bank, and framed Alvarez, only to return before anyone noticed they were gone.

LaBonge asks what happens to them, and Mulder says that they get to provided that the magic stops there. Maleeni tells him that the good ones know when to leave the stage.

Maleeni and LaBonge leave.

MULDER: They are the world's greatest.
SCULLY: We saw through their magic.
MULDER: Uh, there's more! Behold…(Mulder moves his hands around like he’s doing a trick, and then just pulls a wallet out of his wallet) the Amazing Maleeni's wallet!
SCULLY: You picked his pocket?
MULDER: No, I pilfered it from the evidence room to prevent them from completing their final act of prestidigitation.
SCULLY: What are you talking about?
MULDER: I began to wonder why did they need so elaborate a setup? Why so high profile? Why draw the attention of the FBI in the first place?
SCULLY: We were the last piece of the puzzle.
MULDER: Yes, framing Alvarez was just another misdirection. This trick was about EFTs - Electronic Funds Transfers. At the bank Maleeni, Pinchbeck, he didn't have security clearance for them, so he needed a little federal law enforcement intervention.

Specifically, my badge number and my thumbprint. With those two items, they could pull off an EFT, and steal enough money electronically as to make that $1.8 million look like cigar lighting money. But, they can’t do it without this! (He pulls out and holds up the playing card he had touched) Pick a card, Scully, any card.

Mulder and Scully continue to talk as they walk.

Scully tells him that there is one thing that Mulder wasn’t able to explain – how Maleeni turned his head around. Mulder tells her that he doesn’t know how he did it. She tells him that she will show him.

Scully gets down on her hands and knees and does the "hand trick" that LaBonge did earlier.

MULDER: <Weird sound like Shooeee or something> Very nice! How’d you do that?
SCULLY: Magic.
SCULLY gets up and starts to walk away
MULDER: No, seriously, Scully. How’d you do it?
SCULLY ignores him and keeps walking
MULDER: Ok, it’s not the same thing. Uh, it’s different with the head…Come on, uh, look at this...

IMAGES FROM "THE AMAZING MALEENI"

Overall Rating : 9
*Shippy Rating: 8.5
*Based on the Redux II scale (1-10, as Redux II being a 10 [now with Triangle being an 11, and Millennium being a 12, above the scale])*


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