In Chicago at 10:24 PM, Henry Weems is playing
cards in a high-stakes poker game with mobsters. One guy,
Joe Cutrona has four kings in his hand. Weems asks for 3
more cards, and Joe lays down his cards thinking that he
beat Henry, but Henry has a straight flush. He wins $100,000
but won't stay to continue playing. As he leaves, henchmen
take him to the roof and throw him off, but he lands 300
feet below in a hole, survives and walks off, unsteadily.
Chicago 9:17 AM,
Scully gets out of her taxi and calls Mulder on her cell
phone. Behind her, Mulder comes up out of the pavement in a
freight elevator from a basement that extends under the
sidewalk.
Agents staking
out the mobster, Cutrona, who the bureau had been trying to build a case on for organised
crime, gambling, exortion and murder, saw an unidentified
man fall from the roof (30 floors high) then walk off.
Mulder wonders whether this man has some kind of special
healing power. Scully thinks he just got lucky. Going down
into the basement they find a cart with broken wheels,
filled with towels, suggesting the man may have landed in
it. Mulder tells Scully that the basement had not been
thoroughly searched as it wasn't a crime to fall 300 feet
and not die.
Scully tells
Mulder that the wind could have been blowing in a certain
way, or he landed just the right way, and just was really
lucky. Mulder tells her that thousands of variables would
have convene exactly right to be involved in that. In the
towels in the cart they find an artificial eye. (Mulder:
"Looks like maybe we found part of him already")
Melrose Park, Illinois, Mulder and Scully identify
Weems because he was the only person that day to make an
appointment to get fitted for a new artificial eye, even
though atleast 600 people in Chicago used it. They visit the
apartment where Weems is building superintendent, but no one
answers the apartment door. An old woman comes out the front
door, and Mulder grabs it before it closes. (Mulder:
"Come on, Scully, I'm feelin' lucky")
In the hall a
woman, Maggie Lupone, calls them into her apartment for
help. She can't find Weems and she needs help turning off a
water valve because her sink is leaking. As Mulder turns it,
the valve breaks, spraying Mulder with water. Then the floor
gives way and he falls into the apartment below, and Scully
looks at him ("You OK, Mulder?", "Yeah, its
all right, my ass broke the fall"). They find Weems
there, who was hiding with a patch over his eye. Mulder
gives him back his glass eye but Weems refuses to testify
against mobster Jimmy Cutrona. Weems' hobby is making
complex machines, like Rube Goldberg depicted. Scully tells
Weems that Catrona will probably try to kill Weems again.
As the agents
leave a hood enters. Mulder realizes he lost his car key when he fell through
the floor and buzzes Weem's apartment to get back in through
the front security door. Mulder and Scully return a few
moments later to find Weems gone and the hood hanging dead
from a ceiling fan by his shoelaces.
lMulder tells
Scully that it was not murder, but probably a heart attack,
because of cause and effect - he tells her that the guy went
to shoot the gun, but a noise startled him -- Mulder's buzz
at the door. Missing, the bullet knocked over the lamp,
which knocked over the ironing board. As the bullet
ricocheted, Henry jumped over the couch. As the man went
after Henry, he tripped over the ironing board, bounced off
the chair, flipped end-over-end and his shoelace got caught
on the ceiling fan. Scully smiles at his theory, but accepts
it.
Weems seems to have an unusual amount of luck.
Scully talks with a neighbor boy, Richie, who is a friend of
Weems. Scully asks him what is favourite sport was and he
tells her its baseball. She tells him that she liked
baseball too. She sees one of Weem's Goldberg devices in his
room. When she makes it go, at the end it causes a little
basketball do go in a hoop. Richie tells her that Henry made
it for him when he was in the hospital for a liver disease.
He tells her that Henry said he made it because
"Everything happens for a reason. Only just sometimes
hard for us to see." Weems is hiding in the building
and visits the boy after the agents leave.
The agents while
going over Weem's records learn Scully that Henry had no
criminal record, and he made so little money that he didn't
file taxes, no savings or checking account, no insurance, or
even have a library card for that matter. He didn't have a
driver's license either. Scully says that he's 'retired from
the world.' They also learn that Weems survived an airplane
crash in 1989, which Mulder thinks is where the lucky streak
started. He was the only survivor, which is how he lost his
eye. He had been bumped from three previous flights before
they found him a seat in the fateful plane. His seat number
was 13 and the flight number was 7. After the crash,
Weems severed his ties with all his friends. Mulder wonders
why he has resumed using his luck. Weems goes into a shop to
buy a rub-off lottery ticket and wins $100,000. The payment
schedule is too long, though, and he throws it away. Another
man grabs it, but Weems tells him not to take it, or
something bad would happen to him. The man doesn't listen
and he runs outside and is hit by a truck.
At the crime
scene, the store owner tells Mulder and Scully that Henry
had run away after he had confirmed that the man was alive.
Scully tells Mulder that for a fortunate man, a lot of
unfortunate things keep seeming to happen around him. Mulder
tells her that maybe that's part of the package--he can't
have one without the other.
Mulder and Scully split up to search the apartment
building in more detail. Meanwhile another assassin begins
looking for Weems. Mulder picks a lock and enters an
apartment where he finds Weems hiding in a heating duct. The
assassin sees him through the open door and shoots, but the
bullet bounces off Henry's chest, grazes Mulder's arm, and
comes back to strike the assassin. Scully walks in,
wondering what happened. Henry takes the knife out of his
pocket, which is what the bullet hit. Mulder looks at him in
amazement.
At the emergency
room, the injured assassin is wheeled in. Mulder is treated
for a flesh wound. He uses cards to test Weems, who always
gets one card higher than Mulder. It is a nightmare for him
because when you get really lucky other people suffer, which
is why he keeps a low profile. (Henry: "I think it's a
balance thing. Something good happens to me, and everybody
else has to take it in the kiester") Mulder asks him
why he came out and started using his luck. He needs the
money to help Richie who needs a liver transplant, but
Richie has a very rare blood type (B negative and he is also
CNV negative) and can't find a donor. An experimental
treatment program needs $100,000 to get in. Henry pulls out
another card from the deck, its a King.
Scully wants to
put Henry in protective custody but Mulder doesn't think Weems' life is in danger. Several
hoods arrive at the hospital. As Weems dodges them outside,
Scully tells Mulder that all luck eventually runs out and
picks up a card from the deck, an Ace. Mulder rushes out
into the street calling for Weems, as he turns around to
look at Mulder, he is hit by a truck but survives. Scully
tells Mulder not to tell her that it was just luck that
Henry is all right. He tells her that he thinks it's far
from it. He says that he agrees with her that there are
lucky streaks, and that maybe his just need to run their
course. She also tells him that Henry had agreed to testify
against Cutrona.
Richie suffers an
attack and is taken to the same hospital by EMTs. As his
mom, Maggie, gets ready to follow, a mobster kidnaps her.
Weems visits Richie in the hospital and is
convinced that Cutrona is responsible for taking Maggie.
Richie is gravely ill and needs a transplant in the next few
hours. Mulder finds a phone book and just flips through it
to see where his finger lands. He stops on an advertisement
for "The Muhaymin Daycare Service". He blows it
off, and next he flips to "Grayson's Linen
Service"
Weems visits
Cutrona. He won't testify if Maggie is released. The
mobsters take him to the building basement where Maggie is
locked up. They suspend Weems from a hoist but his luck
holds and the hoods are incapacitated by an unlikely series
of events. One of the men goes over to the wire pen where
Maggie was, and goes to open it. A wire is broken and when
he touches the wire, he gets electrocuted. Henry swings over
to the other side of the room, where the cord holding him
breaks. He falls onto a board, which knocks a bucket into
the air. It causes the hook to move in the other
direction--straight into Cutrona's head.
In buildings in
the city, the electricity flickers. In the hospital, Scully
turns to the window, and sees the "R.I. Childes
Pediatric
Care." Sign. Most of the lights on the sign
go out, all except for a few letters with spell out "RICHIE."
Scully gasps. Henry helps Maggie out as Mulder and a cop
come in to see what has happened. The camera pans down to
Cutrona's body, and to his wrist. On it, is a donor
bracelet, saying that he is of blood type B negative.
Ritchie starts to
look a lot better and his skin colour comes back to normal.
Outside Richie's room, Mulder asks Scully what the odds were
that Cutrona would be a perfect match--maybe 1000 to 1 or
1,000,000 to 1. Scully says it could be higher. She smiles
as does Henry.
Scully:
Maybe everything does happen for a reason. Whether we
see it, or not.
Mulder: Maybe your luck is
changing.
Henry: Maybe (Smiling)
