S7E8 · The Amazing Maleeni

At the Santa Monica Pier, a stage magician, The Amazing Maleeni, twists his head completely around at a carnival, while Billy LaBonge, another magician, heckles Maleeni during the event. After the show, the carnival manager comes to the window of Maleeni's van, where he is apparently sitting silently, prepared to leave. When the manager taps him to give him the afternoon fee, Maleeni's severed head falls completely off. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) question LaBonge, who says Maleeni was a charlatan, using cheap child's-level tricks. During the autopsy, Scully finds that, although Maleeni's head was cleanly cut off, he died of a heart attack. She also finds that he was dead for at least a month and refrigerated, even though the carnival manager spoke to him only minutes before his head fell off.

Meanwhile, LaBonge finds a bar owner named Cissy Alvarez, to whom Maleeni owed a large debt. LaBonge says that they shared a prison cell in the past, but Alvarez doesn't remember him. LaBonge says that he caused Maleeni's head to fall off, and that Alvarez will get the money owed if he helps him perform a magic trick. Mulder and Scully learn that Maleeni has an identical twin brother, Albert Pinchbeck, who works in a bank. Albert is even wearing a neckbrace, which he says he needs because of a car accident in Mexico.

Mulder tells him he thinks he committed the decapitation, but Pinchbeck shows that he has no legs, which he also lost in the accident. After the agents leave, Alvarez comes into Pinchbeck's office and threatens to kill him if he does not get his money. LaBonge then frames Alvarez for a robbery by attacking an armored truck full of cash, disguised as Alvarez. Mulder soon finds out that Pinchbeck is the real Maleeni and that he faked having no legs. After confronting Pinchbeck, he admits that he faked his own death in order to get out of Alvarez's debt.

Pinchbeck found his brother dead of a heart attack at home and used his body as a double. They promptly arrest Pinchbeck, as well as LaBonge, who waves around a gun in public precisely in order to be arrested. The two are put in jail for the night.

Mulder and Scully alert the bank manager to check the vault the next morning. They find it emptied of cash. The agents go to Alvarez's bar and find the money hidden above the ceiling. Later Mulder and Scully confront LaBonge and Maleeni as they are released on bail, when Mulder explains that he figured out their plan - LaBonge and Pinchbeck were not, in fact, enemies, and they had been working together to put Alvarez in prison for making LaBonge's life miserable in prison 8 years prior. As masters of sleight of hand and escapology, the two of them easily escaped, performed the robbery and transfer of money bags to the bar, and returned to their cells before being noticed.

After the two magicians make their exit, confident in the lack of evidence against them, Mulder reveals to Scully the true trick they planned to perform — that everything involving Alvarez was purely misdirection. Earlier, when checking whether Pinchbeck had stolen funds from the bank, the manager had told Mulder they would need his FBI badge number and thumb print to gain access to the Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) system. Mulder shows Scully Maleeni's wallet, which he had taken from the Evidence room before confronting him and LaBonge. When the agents first met LaBonge, he had surreptitiously pickpocketed their badges as an example of his skill with sleight of hand, which gave him Mulder's badge number.

Upon their first meeting with Pinchbeck impersonating his brother, Pinchbeck did a card trick with Mulder, leaving Mulder's prints on the card, which as Mulder displays, is securely in Maleeni's wallet. Mulder explains that the pair purposely acted in a high-profile manner to draw the attention of the FBI, and that if they had collected the badge number and thumbprint, they would have been able to perform EFTs. As Mulder and Scully leave the jail, Scully shows that she, too, has learned a trick, and turns her hand around 360 degrees in a similar fashion to what LaBonge did with his hand. Mulder asks Scully to explain how, and she brushes him off, saying simply "magic".