Scully meets Mulder in Chicago to follow up a report that a man was thrown off the roof of a building inhabited by Jimmy Catrona, a ruthless mob boss. Mulder is intrigued that the man walked away unhurt -- perhaps the unidentified survivor has "special abilities."
The agents find a prosthetic eye, apparently lost by the man who fell. They then learn that one Henry Weems, a building superintendent, has made an appointment that morning for a new prosthetic eye.
Visiting the building where Weems works, the agents meet Maggie and Richie, a mother and her ill son who know Weems. Mulder is distracted into trying to fix a plumbing problem for Maggie -- and then after being doused with water and falling through the floor, Mulder finds Weems avoiding the agents in the apartment below. He's wearing an eyepatch. Mulder gives him back his eye.
A chain of implausibility
Weems dazzles the agents with a Rube Goldberg-type contraption he has built, but declines to testify against Catrona, even though the mobster is likely to come after him again. Weems says "I'll take my chances."
Scully wants to dump the case -- there's no obvious X-File here, just a guy lucky to be alive -- but Mulder perceptively argues that Weems' good fortune may itself be a paranormal phenomenon.
As if in an unconscious effort to verify this, Mulder discovers he has forgotten his keys in Weems' apartment. He rings Weems' doorbell, inadvertently distracting a mob thug who has entered the apartment. The thug misfires, setting various pieces of furniture in motion. When the agents reenter, the thug is dead, hanging by his shoelace from a ceiling fan. Weems is unhurt.
Melodrama and obscurity
The agents continue the investigation. They visit Weems' sickly young neighbor Richie, for whom the man has kindly built a contraption that utilizes a complex chain of causality to toss basketballs in the air. Later, Weems visits Richie and gently says he'll be going away for a while, as he has something to do.
Scully looks up Weems' records and finds he has none -- he has lived in extreme obscurity, without even a driver's license, since a 1989 plane crash that only he survived. Questioning Mulder's theory that Weems has incredible luck, Scully asks why he wouldn't then just enter the lottery.
Weems listens to this surreptitiously, then goes to a store to enter the lottery. He foregoes trying for a multimillion-dollar grand prize but wins a $100,000 scratch-off card -- only to throw it all away because the installments would take years. A long-haired youth picks the card out of the trash and ignores Weems' warnings that it will bring bad luck. Moments later, the exuberant young fellow is hit and injured by a truck.
Scully and Mulder search Weems' building, finding a hidden passageway. Exploring the passage, Mulder finds the low-profile superintendent at the very moment that yet another mob thug is approaching to kill the man. The thug falls to the floor, severely wounded by his own bullet, and Mulder has been grazed as well.
Lucky with cards
At the hospital, Mulder uses a deck of cards to confirm that Weems is a lucky man. He then sympathizes with the super's unique plight: such good luck is somehow balanced by bad luck to those around him.
In a wistful gesture, it emerges that Weems reluctantly bought the scratch-off card, not so much for personal gain as to pay for Richie's medical expenses. So far, it has been impossible to find a suitable donor to give the kid a new liver.
The thugs continue trying to kill Weems, who survives a truck accident. But Scully, skeptical of Mulder's theorizing, thinks Weems' luck is running out. Weems says he will testify against Catrona.
Richie's illness becomes acute and he is brought to the hospital with burning-red eyes. Even worse, the mobsters -- sensing Weems' weakness is his fondness for the kid -- kidnap the boy's mother, Maggie.
Mulder continues to ponder the complex web of causality that surrounds Weems. He wonders if he and Scully may now be an "integral part" of the Chicago man's luck.
Weems goes to see the mobsters, hoping to win Maggie's release. Instead, while Maggie looks on in horror, Catrona and his thugs prepare to torture the gentle superintendent, tying his arms with an electrical cord and hoisting him up. Doing so, however, causes an electrical problem.
As sparks and cords fly, a metal ball swings down and smites the screaming Catrona. He is dead. Moreover, the mob kingpin's liver is a perfect match for Richie's. The kid's medical problem is solved.
Mulder happily suggests to a smiling Weems that "maybe your luck is changing."
advertisement
