The Steve McGarrett Story – No #38

We continue our story from here

The McGarrett house in 1992

Young Steve: Hey, I just saw uncle Joe leaving. What’s going on?

John: Sit down son. We need to talk. I’m sending you and your sister back to the mainland. You’re leaving tomorrow.

Young Steve: What?

John: Joe got you into the Army-Navy Academy. Mary is going to stay with Aunt Deb. So you guys will only be a few hours away from each other.

Young Steve: I just started junior year. Why are you doing this?

John: It’s not safe for you here anymore. You have to go now.

Young Steve: You’re gonna stay?

John: I can’t leave. I still have work to do here.

Young Steve: You know what? Mom would’ve never sent us away.

John: Yeah, well. Your mother is gone, okay? Now it’s just me. Listen, I ……. Steve, in a couple of years, you’re gonna be 18. And pretty soon  you’re gonna need to decide what kind of man you are.

Young Steve: What kind of man are you? You’re breaking up our family?

John: I’m the kind of man that can’t walk away from a fight. My first responsiblity  is not my safety, it’s yours. Now you don’t have to like it. I just hope someday you can understand. And Steve…… you may not hear from me for a while. If anything happens, you can always trust your uncle Joe.

With the comments on Episode 112 Lena asked me about the timeline of when Steve and Mary were sent away and how soon after Doris’s “death” it happened. I thought that because Mary said, “I last saw you at mother’s funeral”, that it was within the first weeks of her death. But from this conversation above, it seems like they stayed for a few months. Doris died on 19 April 1992, and if I understand correctly school for the new school year in Hawaii, starts in August – so this must have been in August, about 4 months after her death)

But let us get back to Steve’s story……

Steve follows Joe

Joe: I made you three blocks ago. Why are you following me?

Steve: I can help you find Shelburne.

Joe: No you can’t.

Steve: You’re not gonna last long by yourself. Yakuza’s got a price on your head.

Joe: You expected me to run and hide?

Steve: You know what Joe, you’re stubborn, okay. But you’re not stupid. Adam Noshimuri thinks you killed his father. So long as he believes that, you are a target.

Joe: Go home, son.

Steve: Listen to me. You gotta tell Adam his father’s alive.

While walking down a street in the city, Joe nearly becomes the victim of a drive-by shooting. Steve catches up with him at HPD.

Steve: Joe, what happened?

Joe: I didn’t think Adam Noshimuri would take it this far.

Steve: Really? I mean it’s the Yakuza, Joe. They don’t play by any rule book. Innocent people could’ve died.

Joe: I know.

Because Stan is out of town, Danny keeps Rachel company in the hospital, while she is in labour. With some complications she needs a C-section and young Charles William Edwards is born.

That evening Steve arranges a meeting with Adam. They tell Adam the truth about Joe helping Hiro to fake his death. Joe puts a call through to Hiro in order to convince Adam.

Adam: I don’t understand. Why?

Joe: Old Chinese proverb: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Our mutual enemy is WoFat.

Adam: I don’t give a damn about him.

Steve: Well, you should, because he kills anyone who crosses him or gets in his way. Your Uncle Koji, his own lieutenant, Victor Hess. You don’t get it, do you? Adam your father went from being a powerful ally to a loose end. He knew it was only a matter of time before WoFat went after him.

Joe: And you. That’s why your father asked me to help him fake his death.

Adam: He should have told me.

Joe: He wanted to. But he knew that that would only put you in jeopardy as well. His fight would become your fight. So he had to make a choice. Tell you the truth, risk your life. Tell you a lie and keep you safe. If you ask me, he chose wisely.

Adam: No, I need to see him. He wouldn’t tell me where he is, but you are going to.

Joe: No, I can’t. I made Hiro a promise. What’s important now is that you proceed as if your father is dead. No one can know he is alive. But quietly we will make inroads into WoFat’s organization, until we find him and kill him.

Steve: We just need to know if you’re in or if you’re out.

After the job is done for the evening, Steve and Joe get some time to talk.

Steve: Yeah, but there is one more thing we need to settle. I’m pretty sure you know what it is.

Joe: Shelburne.

Steve: Don’t you think I deserve to know what the hell is going on?

Joe: Yes. I do.

Steve: Okay. Oh man where are you going?

Joe: You want answers? Come with me.

Steve and Joe go to John McGarrett’s grave.

(I always wondered why Joe specifically chose to tell the story of Shelburne at John’s grave. Did Joe what to have John there as “witness” to the lies he was telling Steve, in order to make it more believable to Steve?)

Steve: I don’t understand.

Joe: Your father was the closest thing I ever had to a brother. You know that?

Steve: He felt the same way about you.

Joe: You remember the day he told you he was sending you away?

Steve: Like it was yesterday, Joe.

Joe: On that day, he made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, I would look after you as if you were my own son. But I broke that promise.

Steve: What are you talking about Joe?

Joe: When your father started his investigation into the Yakuza, he had no idea how far it would go, or how dangerous it would get. It got so that he was so paranoid, he didn’t trust the people he was working with. So he came to me and asked for my help. That’s how Shelburne was born.

Steve: Wait a minute. You telling me Shelburne isn’t a person?

Joe: It’s an alias, a codename we created, to draw attention and fire away from your father’s investigation, to protect you and your sister.

Steve: Okay, all right. Well if it was an investigation into the Yakuza, then why does WoFat  care so much about Shelburne?

Joe: Because Shelburne killed his father.
Steve: And by Shelburne, you mean my father?

Joe: No, it was me. I killed him.

Steve: What happened? Who was he?

Joe: None of that matters now. What’s past is past. The one thing I regret is that I caused you all this trouble. I promised to protect you from all this, and I didn’t. All that I did, by coming back here, was make it worse. And that’s why I have to leave.

 We have never heard how John and Joe became friends. In Episode 201 Steve and Joe had this conversation:

Joe: Are you okay son? Been awful quiet since we left Mokoto’s. What’s on your mind?

Steve: I was only 15 years old when my father sent me away.

Joe: He did that to protect you.

Steve: I know, I know. But then I joined the service. I got deployed. I didn’t get a lot of time to spend with him as an adult. And now I realise there’s all this stuff about him that I never knew. He had all these secrets and it bugs me.

Joe: Well when this is over , maybe we can shed some light on those secrets.

Steve: Maybe we shouldn’t

Joe: But why?

Steve: WoFat warned me not to dig into my family’s past. He said I might not like what I find. What did he mean by that?

Joe: Listen son, you may not have known your father, but he knew you. When you were training at Coronado, he called to check in with me every week, to see how you were doing. And as for when you were younger, well trust me, that was as hard on him as it was on you. In the 34 years  I knew your father, I saw him cry twice: At your mother’s funeral, and the day he sent you away. He was a good man, and there is no reason to think otherwise.

• From this conversation, it seems that John and Joe only knew each other from the time Steve was born. How did they meet? What is their connection?
• We have never gotten an answer of how involved Joe was with Doris and if he knew about her faking her death. If he knew, he was the most awful friend to both John and Doris, if he allowed John to abandon his children like he did. Doris faked her death to protect them, not to make their lives worse. I doubt that she thought John would send the kids away, and would have instructed Joe not to allow it. With the terrible heartache that followed that decision – I would think that witness protection would have been a far better option to her.
• For me personally, the only way that Joe could really still be a good person in all this, was if he did not know about Doris and Shelburne, and that he only discovered it after they got the name from the video John left. He then somehow got in contact with Doris, and tried to contain things after that, by lying to Steve, to protect Doris/Shelburne.
• Like Steve, I also want to know what WoFat meant by the family’s past.
  

 – Hawaii Five-0: Episode 214 –

Puʻolo (The Package)

To be continued here