Chip Jacobs - The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles

Praise for The darkest glare

The engrossingly bizarre tale of a murder plot within Los Angeles real estate circles An entertaining true-crime period piece built around a chillingly odd sociopathic villain.

Kirkus Reviews

horrifying and hilarious. Publishers Weekly

Jacobs chops are on brilliant display in The Darkest Glare, a delightfully off-kilter true-crime tale. The prose is intimate, darkly funny, and crisp. This isnt an old song in a new key, but an entirely new song about crime, fear, and a weird kind of redemption that could only happen in the general vicinity of Hollywood.

Ron Franscell , bestselling author of The Darkest Night

This is not just another Hollywood Whodunit. In the end we find it is really about one mans search and struggle to find his own personal truths and redemption. Well written and highly recommended.

Steve Hodel , bestselling author of Black Dahlia Avenger

Praise for Chip Jacobs

A riveting and enjoyable look at how local myths are constructed, and a vivid depiction of a time and a place that felt full of possibilities.

Booklist

A completely original and genre-defying workboth historical novel and metaphysical noir. The author has caught the brass ring and given it to us as pure gold.

Tristine Rainer , author Apprenticed to Venus,
My Years with Anas Nin

[A] remarkably entertaining and informative chronicle of the birth andso farinexorable evolution of smogThis book is just amazing, a gripping story well told.

Booklist (starred review and one of the top
environmental books of the year)

Style delivers substance in true Hollywood fashion, with character-driven plots draped in glamour and sensation... the history of smog has never been so sexy.

Los Angeles Times

Jacobsis an exceptional storyteller, and his lively look at the extraordinary career of Gordon Zahleris a peculiar page-turner.

Publishers Weekly

This amazing book is all heartChip Jacobs blends the skills of an investigative journalist, the glitz of Hollywood, and the smooth storytelling of fiction to weave a profile of his larger-than-life uncle that will leave you crying, laughing and gasping in wonder!

Denise Hamilton , bestselling author of The Jasmine Trade

this is a genuine rare bird book

Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013
rarebirdlit.com

Copyright 2021 by Chip Jacobs

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Set in Dante

The Darkest Glare was previously released in significantly different form
as The Ascension of Jerry, March 2012.

epub isbn : 9781644282090

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Jacobs, Chip, author.
Title: The darkest glare: a true story of murder , blackmail , and real estate greed in 1979 Los Angeles / Chip Jacobs.
Description: First Hardcover Edition. | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2021.
Identifiers: ISBN: 9781644281918
Subjects: LCSH Kasparov, Richard. | Schneiderman, Jerry. | CrimeCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory20th century. | Real estate businessCaliforniaLos Angeles. | Real estate businessCaliforniaLos Angeles County. | Los Angeles (Calif.)History20th century. | Los Angeles Region (Calif.)History20th century. | Los Angeles (Calif.)Social conditions20th century. | BISAC TRUE CRIME / General | HISTORY / United States / State & Local /
West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)

Classification: LCC HV6795.L6 .J33 2021 | DDC 364.9794/94dc23

The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones.

William Shakespeare

Contents

PROLOGUE

THE CUL-DE-SAC

T he man in the rusty Volkswagen had a message, a message he was bursting to share as he rolled up alongside me at the stoplight that I would forever detest. The instant his minibuss spindly tires came to rest, he stretched himself across his gearshift, cranked down the passenger-side window, then pantomimed for me to follow suit.

Crap, I thought, lets get this over withthe hasty lecture about how teenage drivers like myself needed to be more careful. And he wouldnt be wrong. Two blocks back, I made him swerve, in the briefest of asphalt drama, when I tried merging my parents station wagon into the lane that his weather-battered box of bolts was puttering in, sub-speed limit.

Of course, I was distracted. Isnt that shorthand for most seventeen-year-old boys?

Sorry, sir, Id tell Mr. VW with bogus wholesomeness. Ill check my mirrors better next time.

The grouch had already tooted his reedy horn to register his displeasure, so I guessed this was his coda. But when I slid my window down and swiveled my head, intending to nod with sheepish contrition, the guessing was moot. I got a taste of the unforeseen: a pair of seething, bloodshot eyes that sent my core body temperature reeling.

Hey, motherfucker! he yelled over his clattering muffler. Im gonna get you.

Get me?

Spittle pelted out of his window with every other syllable, and he pumped a fist for emphasis. The stranger gunning for me over a traffic peccadillo was adhering to a codebook whose fine print wouldnt let this go with a disapproving eyebrow.

Yeah, you, motherfucker, he said, changing things up. You .

I suddenly disliked that pronoun, even as I was too petrified to watch him repeat it. So, I gazed straight through my windshield, piecing together what Id seen. A stork-ish figure whose hippy-long, chestnut hair splayed over a tattered US Army jacket. Veins bulging around the whiskers of a bearded neck. A fixed glower engraved into his cheeks. If Martin Scorsese needed to cast an everyman one small offense from detonation, hed found his next Travis Bickle in this hothead.

Seconds dragged out like minutes at the red light trapping me next to him. While Id checkered my early driving record pretty good, dinging and denting that troop-carrier-size Pontiac Grand Safari, there was no analog for this. We were on Woodman Avenue, a windy road through suburban Altadena, the small, Bohemian city north of my hometown, Pasadena, and I had no idea what to do.

Im gonna get you! the thirty-something regurgitated in a voice still molten with dander. You .

Once the light changed, I tapped the gas pedal, praying he would rumble past. Movement in the rear scuttled that delusion. By popping his clutch, hed jerked his white, orange-trimmed cube behind me in tactical advantage for whatever punishment he was devising. Then the subsequent light flashed red, like it, too, was in on the conspiracy. Idling there, I avoided my mirrors. Viewing that scowl once was enough to make you want to unsee it.

Sitting to my right that misty, spring afternoon in 1979 was my best friend, Dave Ferris, who had never known the car as anything other than a faux-wood-sided chariot for our expanding liberties. In it, wed traveled to smoky rock concerts at the Fabulous Forum and to keg-fueled house parties blissfully free of chaperones; to the hilltop, all-girls Catholic school where we trolled for dates until the fleet-footed nuns rousted us off the grounds.