Winner of the Shamus Award: A failed private eye searches Los Angeles for a murderous white supremacist.   Aaron Gunner made a lousy private detective. After a year's carnage in Vietnam and a quick exit from the police academy, private work was the only avenue he saw to be a hero. But the seediness, tedium, and lack of real power crushed his hopes, and he quit the job after inadvertently setting a pregnant woman up for a violent death. But after a savage racial murder, it may be time to come out of retirement.   The white man comes to the Acey Deuce, a bar in South Central Los Angeles, to blow the head off a young black militant. The dead radical's sister pays Gunner a visit with a .22 revolver, and convinces him to find her brother's killer. As Gunner draws closer to answers, prejudice and rage threaten to tear Los Angeles apart. To save the city--and himself--Aaron Gunner must finally find his calling.