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Eliot Kleinberg 1/31/26 Eliot Kleinberg 1/31/26

Dispatch 6

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EK on “Action Pulp” Blog: https://actionpulp.com/2026/01/28/eliot-kleinberg/

Hypocrite's Row

More Nate Moran Q&A

Was the slang in Hypocrite’s Row accurate?
The Internet has many lists of Roaring 20s slang, so I had plenty of material. But I also had to use moderation; too much would sent the story into parody.

Who was Nate’s biggest mentor besides Dirk Monroe?
History professor Oliver “Doc” Richter taught Nate at Miami High and later taught at the new University of Miami. His historical knowledge helped Nate solve some mysteries. As Nate said – and as this writer has said often about some of my own teachers -- “Friends told me they hated history because the teacher made it boring. Mr. Richter made it, well, come alive.”

What were Nate’s attitudes toward gay and Black people?
Nate’s open-mindedness didn’t make him a unicorn. While bigotry was pretty much an institution in the 1920s, plenty of people had progressive attitudes. But Nate wasn’t perfect. He still harbored some institutional prejudice. But he also knew police detectives who ignored or dissed “others” did so at their professional their peril. He didn’t do that, and it helped him solve many cases.

Was there really a federal Prohibition agency?
After the 18th Amendment was ratified in January 1919, the Volstead Act was passed to enforce it. The Bureau of Prohibition was formed Jan. 16, 1920. It started with 960 agents and had 2,300 at its peak. Not surprisingly, many were assigned to South Florida. Agents commonly were referred to by the public and the press as "Prohis," or "dry agents.” Many people already considered them the bad guys, but when penalties were jacked up in 1929 (up to 5 years for first offenders) animosity toward them ballooned. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the agency was dissolved into what would become the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

What does “jake” mean?
The slang term, documented as far back as 1914, meant fine, good, satisfactory, or all right, as in, "everything's jake." I first heard it said by Robert Redford in 1974. I was a 17-year-old usher at a movie theater in the Miami suburbs that had had the good fortune to book the film The Sting, which won seven Oscars and stayed in the theaters for some six months. I would see all or parts of the movie probably about 80 times. “Jake” stuck. Writers sock away tidbits for future use. Even decades later.