Dmitriy's Last Rap / Web designer, rapper, protector, enforcer, tied to porn and the mob -- who was Dima?

{DMITRIY_052104_kocihernandez} Ludmilla "Luda" Romasenko - his mother. Still crying, unable to work, adored her only son. Portrait taken at her apartment building in SF, holding her son's image, that usually hangs over her fireplace. Dmitriy Romasenko was murdered by an apparent hit-for-hire assassin last November 15th. The murder took place on Fulton, near 17th Avenue, at the edge of Golden Gate Park. Right across the street from 4018 Fulton. There's still a Memorial at 17/Fulton. Dmitriy was 21, and aspired to be the first Russian rap star. He was a man of many faces - rap singer, porn star girlfriend, an idol and legend among young Russian thugs in the Richmond district. Also, much beloved - 160 people came to his funeral. Murder has not been solved. Story title is: Who Killed Dmitriy Romasenko? Scheduled as a Sunday magazine cover, sometime in June. Important people to shoot: Cooperative - and doesn't think her son was a gangster. Her address is 334 26th Ave., Apt. 7. Tele is (415)816-9916. Does she still have Dmitriy's Jaguar? Or his Lincoln VIII? Be nice to shoot, if she does. PLEASE CALL HER TO CONFIRM AND CHOOSE MEETING PLACE. You are meeting her at Dmitriy's gravesite and then going to her home to shoot some holga copy pix of dmitriy and his friends. (might have to go back on sat for the copy photos?) Photo taken on 5/27/04 in San Francisco, CA. Photo by CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ / The San Francisco Chronicle less {DMITRIY_052104_kocihernandez} Ludmilla "Luda" Romasenko - his mother. Still crying, unable to work, adored her only son. Portrait taken at her apartment building in SF, holding her son's image, that usually ... more Photo: CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ Photo: CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Dmitriy's Last Rap / Web designer, rapper, protector, enforcer, tied to porn and the mob -- who was Dima? 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

The assassin emerged from the dense shrubbery at the northern edge of Golden Gate Park where he had been lying in wait, and fired six shots from a handgun at close range, the bullets making a tight and deadly pattern from Dmitriy Romasenko's chest to his hip.

Dmitriy's friend Edvin Amzayan hit the pavement. Dmitriy screamed but did not fall. Instinctively, he ran -- away from the man in camouflage gear who disappeared into the protective cloak of a park footpath near Park Presidio Drive -- and toward the far side of Fulton Street, where people were about, smoking a cigarette, walking a dog. A few steps down the slope of 17th Avenue, Dmitriy collapsed. Blood was pouring out of the now-unconscious 21-year-old.

He died about an hour later at San Francisco General Hospital, where even its legendary trauma team couldn't save him.

The homicide cops who caught Dmitriy's murder on that cold and foggy Saturday night last November were Kelly Carroll and Mike Stasko.

On the telephone a few days after the murder, Carroll described what had happened. "Two guys are at an apartment on Fulton. Dmitriy's car is right in front. Edvin's Lexus is a block away. What car do they take? Not Dmitriy's. That puts our soon-to-be-dead guy getting in on the passenger side, abutting the bushes, where our witnesses say a clean-shaven white guy with a military bearing has been sitting three, four minutes. Witnesses hear the chirp of the car door opening. One chirp, only the driver's side. Dmitriy's locked out. Then, six shots. You've got to ask yourself, did his buddy dime the victim?" Carroll is thinking out loud, creating a suspect pool.

Carroll said Dmitriy had almost completed making his first CD and was hoping to become the first Russian rapper ("Russia" being shorthand for any of the former Soviet Republics; when he was 7, Dmitriy had emigrated with his mother from near Kiev, in Ukraine). Another place Carroll and Stasko might seek Dmitriy's killer would be in the violence-drenched world of rap.

"There's talk," said the veteran inspector, "of Sacramento Russian gangsters pushing and shoving in down here. The locals," like Dmitriy, "are Jewish. In Sacramento they're Pentacostals, hicks from the sticks." A third investigative avenue.

"Dmitriy'd been bouncing from town to town for weeks." L.A., Vegas, Frisco. "He wants to get out of Dodge. He's helping his porn-star girlfriend, Chasey Lain, get custody of her kid." The cops wanted to talk to the kid's father. "Dmitriy's telling everybody he wants to go back to Russia, do the rap- star thing there. His mother fled with him from the iron hand of a mobster father when Dmitriy was little. In Russia, Dad is a made guy. I do fully anticipate that somebody, somewhere is going to wind up with his throat cut."

The office of the Medical Examiner for the city and county of San Francisco sits at the rear of 850 Bryant St., under the freeway overhead and beneath the full weight of the Hall of Justice and the city jail above. To get there, one descends.

The autopsy report is a neglected art form, a formalist rendering of tragedy and folly. Dmitriy and Edvin had been on their way to a party at a Russian restaurant in Burlingame, Dmitriy dressed in black. By the time assistant medical examiner Dr. Jon J. Smith began his work, the body was "enshrouded in a white plastic pouch." Dmitriy was 5 foot 7, 187 pounds. Dr. Smith called him "obese," but friends would say he was built tough. There were two healed scars in his abdomen -- he had been shot, and stabbed, before. In his bloodstream, the toxicology report showed, was residue of the party drug ecstasy. Dmitriy, said Dr. Smith, "appeared older than the reported age of 21 years." Dmitriy's neck, chest, arms and hands were tattooed. There was a necklace and a temple pendant. A man in prison with the inscription "Thief's Destiny" in Russian. A cannabis leaf. A boy with an attack dog and a gun and the inscription FRISCO MOB. The word MOB on his forearm. A Red Square cityscape with the inscriptions RIP TOLIKN, and SUCKAFREE. A bull wearing a six-pointed Jewish star. The letters S and F, superimposed; CITY II; WESTSIDE. Ripping skin with a protruding hand holding a gun. Chai, the Hebrew symbol for life.

Ludmilla Romasenko is crying from the moment she opens the door of her second-floor flat in one of those small, nondescript stucco apartment buildings west of Twin Peaks on what once were sand dunes.

"Are you all right?" I ask. What else can you say?

"It's a question I cannot answer. Very hard question. Even to lie and say I'm OK is hard."

In her living room is a television the size of an SUV. "That's the biggest television I ever saw outside a store," I say.

"My son bought it for me." She motions toward a photo of Dmitriy hanging above the mantle. He has dark, sleepy eyes. A thin mustache. A cherub mouth.

There are other photos. And a menorah. I admire it. "He made that," she says.

"Are you going to shul?" I ask, letting her know I'm in the tribe, too.

"I'm upset with God," she says. Her brown eyes are red-rimmed. "Even though the rabbi explained there is a reason for anything. For me, is no reason. I can't even imagine, my son, he has so many friends. Everybody is meeting at the cemetery. It's like having a barbecue and hanging out, only now it's the Jewish cemetery in Colma. He was the kind of person who loved everybody, and everybody loved him. And at the same time is one mysterious coward, hide in bushes and run away.

"My son," she continues, tucking her legs beneath her on the white leather couch, "had many talents. This table, he made himself. A very, very smart, happy kid. He started to talk when he was 9 months, since then he never shuts up." She stifles a sob.

Luda is wearing a floppy white T-shirt hanging over sweatpants. Her hair is not naturally blond. She picks up one of several photo albums, opens it at random. A photo of a pit bull, like the tattoo. "The best of the breed," she says. "His dog Chuck. The dog was murdered. Somebody broke into his house and hung his dog. It happened six months before Dima was murdered. I only found out after his death, from his friends."

The Luca Brasi-sleeps-with-the-fishes imagery must have been a warning. But from whom? For what?

Luda brings out the CD Dmitriy was working on. It's called Organized Crime, and his group -- he appears to be the only white guy -- calls itself Goodfelonz. "He wants to go to Russia and bring all the rappers. There was nothing he touched that didn't bloom. He says, 'Ma, in everything you have to put your soul.'

"He had a Mark VIII," an expensive Lincoln, "and a Jaguar," Luda says. "He couldn't stand anything less than the best."

"Where did he get all that money?" I want to know.

"What money, exactly? You think that's much money? I don't think so. It's a Russian mentality -- have just one something, but really good. He was working since he was 10, he filed taxes since he was 13, I think. I also drive BMW 740 -- so what?" Luda was an accountant for an architectural firm. It's been three months since Dmitriy was killed, and she's still not able to return to work.

She picks up the CD, turns it over in her hands. "This music," she says, "it was never my music. But now it is only kind of music I can keep walking." She adds, speaking to her absent son: "Listen to me, Dima."

"I'd like to hear it," I say.

She puts the CD in the player. Turns the volume way up. There are speakers standing on either side of the television. The song begins:

It's a bloody game when you're playing by the gun.

You can die tomorrow when your life is done.

Close to the booming speakers, Luda is keeping time with a foot in a heavy woolen sock.

The streets want to see me dead under a bridge

So don't push me because I'm close to the edge

The streets know when the game is real.

"Is that Dima singing?" I ask her.

She shakes her head no. "I think his name is 4Tay. 'Take Me Away' is tentative title, but Dima was still working on it."

So when it's crunch time be ready for war

Because hot slugs rip through your fancy cords

It's a bloody game so live by the rules, code of the street

Take me away to a better place today.

It's powerful, this song born of whoever Dmitriy Romasenko must have known was hunting him.

"How can I get in touch with those guys on the CD?"

"Are you not afraid?" Luda's tone is mocking.

"Was Dima afraid after Chuck was hung?"

"He was such a big guy, he would never say anything was wrong."

"Was Dima like his father?"

"He's been raised by me without ever knowing his father that well. Dima hadn't seen him since 1997, until two weeks before he died. His father was in New York, he brought some documents because Dima wants to go to the Ukraine." If Dima had recently seen his father, and Kelly Carroll was right about the dad, what did that add to the puzzle?

"Dima's father was a gangster?"

"Of course, I would not say yes," Luda says. "If you want to know about criminal record his father has in former Soviet Union, answer is yes."

"What's his name? What are his crimes?"

Luda laughs a mirthless laugh. "I haven't laughed for a long time," she says. "You really make me laugh.

"I hear you want to ask me about Russian mafiya. You can ask, but it's not such thing. I am expert in that, let me put it this way. If you looking for Dima was a mafiya, I have to disappoint you."

"Are you afraid, Luda? Of whoever did this?"

She shrugs. Lifts her plump hands in a gesture that says, how could this be? "He already killed me, so how can I be afraid of a f -- coward? My son is in heaven and that coward should be in hell. What's for sure, no one ever brings so many flowers to his grave."

"The cops also told me Dima had a porn-star girlfriend."

"I personally have the privilege to know that woman. She's very manipulative. She's telling him she'll introduce him to Dr. Dre. and P. Diddy.

"She is probably my age. Her brain didn't function that well to know his age. She was not a girlfriend. How is that possible? I have been telling my kid, with this kind of girl, you can get a headache."

Chasey Lain is obviously not her favorite subject, so I ask about the tattoos. "What does MOB stand for?" She smiles. "Every time he's telling me, 'You're the Mother of the Boy.' In his song, it's 'Money Over Bitches.' Here, look." Luda leaves, then returns with a heavy, gold MOB pendant, encrusted with what look like diamonds, on a thick gold chain. If the jewels are real, it cost an arm and a leg.

For a while, we talk about his music, while Luda wraps the chain around her hand. "Do you know, he also wants to be a chef?" she says. "He would cook lobster, crab, shrimp. It was incredible. And he would add vodka and flame it -- such a presentation." Sometimes he designed Web sites. He had part-time work as a personal trainer. But none of that paid for Jaguars and Lincolns, diamonds, gold and supersize televisions. Just before leaving, I ask Luda: "Do you think the cops can get to the bottom of this?"

She is crying again, mourning her only child, brought to America to escape from a husband she had married when she was younger than Dima was when he was gunned down.

"You know, it's an old expression in former Soviet Union. 'Police only know what they're told.' So if nobody is saying anything, how would they know?"

Inspector Mike Stasko was late for our appointment at the Cafe Roma, a Hall of Justice hangout. At 10 a.m. the place was empty save for a table of defense lawyers swapping lies. I was contemplating another coffee when he came in with his new partner, Inspector Marta McDowell. Kelly Carroll had left the Homicide unit.

The look Stasko wore, I might have been a murder suspect. McDowell, a heavyset woman in her mid-40s, wasn't nearly so friendly.

"Anybody want coffee?" I asked. They shook their heads grimly. I said something casual, to break the ice.

Stasko said, "Are you trying to warm us up?"

"I am," I said. "Is there something wrong with that?"

I inquired about Stasko's background. He was doing the talking. He was an experienced investigator who had recently joined Homicide. This was his first murder case; because of a shakeup in the unit, there hadn't even been time for a standard orientation with a veteran partner.

"A young man," he said, when we began to talk about Dmitriy, "in the prime of life. According to most people out in the neighborhood," the Russian enclave in the Richmond District, "he was the protector of everybody. Everybody looked up to him. His mother is really proud of how after he got out of the ranch in Arizona he put himself through high school, went to technical school for computers. He worked designing Web sites. He was also able to give some time back to the community, tutoring kids after school."

What got him sent to a ranch to straighten out wayward kids?

"He was a Soreño gang member hanging out in the Mission when he was only 14," Stasko said. A Russian Soreño? He was a one-man United Nations of crime. Dmitriy had a pair of minor drug busts, one as a juvenile in 1996, and another, in 2002, when he was also caught carrying brass knuckles to a Raiders game in Oakland.

"Was he connected to the Russian mafiya?" I asked. "Is his dad a gangster in the Ukraine?"

"About the father," Stasko said, "if I can't prove it, I'm not going to say anything bad about anybody." Stasko had a diamond stud in his earlobe and receding ginger hair. Behind his glasses, his eyes were level and earnest. He was no doubt methodical.

"You talked to the FBI about the mafiya thing?"

"The FBI hasn't really shared anything with me about what they know." Shocking.

"What about Chasey Lain?" I had checked her out online, where I learned that she was, "a beautiful goddess," who had "several award-winning performances for Vivid Video," which offered a $49.95 three-pack of Chasey classics. If you wanted to see her in "Interview with a Vibrator," though, you had to buy it individually.

"I haven't been able to locate her," Stasko said. "Apparently she isn't where she's supposed to be. People don't even know how she fits in. There's been a lack of cooperation in talking to some people in this case."

"What about the guy who was with Dmitriy, Edvin Amzayan?"

"He's been interviewed," Stasko said. Period.

"I saw in the autopsy report that Dmitriy was only five seven," I said. "Kind of short for a tough guy."

Stasko, no Wilt Chamberlain himself, bristled. "How big was Napoleon?" he demanded. I was kicking myself for having pushed his button, so I didn't pay enough attention to what he said next. "Dmitriy's father was shorter than that. " Much later I would grasp that Stasko had seen the father, whose name I had finally wheedled out of Luda -- Victor, Victor Romasenko.

"Sometimes," said Marta McDowell, finally speaking up, "It's the way you carry yourself. You," she said, pointing, "have the autopsy report?"

"We haven't seen that yet," Stasko said. "How'd you get it?"

"From the Medical Examiner. It's public record."

"Could I see that?" McDowell asked.

Stasko and I went on talking about Dmitriy's many facets -- rap music, a Mexican street gang, computers, his plan to return to the old country, a porn star, rumored showdowns with Sacramento Russian gangs -- while McDowell, chewing gum, read the autopsy report. Stasko was relaxing, shedding his defensive edge. "This case here," I said, "it's more like television than real life. A whodunit. A hard case to solve."

"I don't know," Stasko said. "All you've got to do is talk to the right people; someone's got to be in the right mood to talk to you. You really have to gain their trust. A lot of people out there know stuff they're not giving up."

FBI agents are not like cops. They smile, and talk, and present themselves as nice guys and gals. Meanwhile, they give up nothing. Not even to cops working a murder. They have nicer offices than the SFPD, too. The conference room where I met with Steve Tarchak, on the 13th floor of the federal building, had a fine view. Tarchak's business card said he was a special agent, but, he said, "It should say supervisory -- supervisory special agent."

He was in charge of a squad dedicated to bringing to justice what the FBI called the EOC, Eurasian Organized Crime. "There are several aspects," Tarchak told me. "One is established EOC guys, originally formed in the former Soviet Union. It's spread globally, to include the United States, including associates who travel through the Bay Area here. Powerful groups that can affect a country's economy. Russian authorities estimate that more than half of Russia's economy is controlled by the EOC -- natural gas, mineral resources, public and private companies."

Tarchak was speaking from handwritten notes. Everything he was saying was readily available from books, or online. And more. The British newspaper the Guardian had reported that the Russian government had exported 500 tons of gold bullion, destination unknown. EOC groups had been reported to have sold a submarine to the Colombian drug cartels, to have fixed the Winter Olympics, and to control stars of the National Hockey League. Environmental groups said the Russian mafiya had poached so many sturgeon for $100-an-ounce beluga caviar that the species was now officially threatened.

"What we see in the Bay Area," Tarchak said, "is a lot of illegal proceeds laundered through here." He mentioned the trial of Pavel "Pavlo" Ivanovich Lazarenko, who the government had charged with acquiring a fortune through extortion and fraud while he was prime minister of Ukraine (where the Romasenko family comes from), and laundering as much as $40 million through Bay Area banks. Lazarenko pled not guilty. The government contended he used $6. 7 million to buy a 41-room mansion in Novato that had once belonged to Eddie Murphy. There are supposed to be two helicopter pads, five swimming pools, and gold-plated doorknobs.

In June, Lazarenko was convicted of 29 felony charges, including money laundering, wire fraud, transportation of stolen property and conspiracy.

Then Lazarenko was a Russian mafiya kingpin? Living in splendor in Marin County?

"He has been charged, and is still facing charges in the Ukraine, with hiring some OC-related individuals to do contract killings of economic rivals. You're free to infer what you want from that," said Tarchak.

"The EOC are much less structured than the traditional Cosa Nostra, more fluid," Tarchak continued. "They're not so much about ritual and code. They want to make money, they want to make a lot of money, and they want to make it now." Extortion, human trafficking, prostitution, loan sharking, drugs -- anything profitable.

"The second aspect," Tarchak continued, "are individuals who come together to commit crimes of opportunity. Credit card fraud is huge. Hack into a credit card provider and get thousands of numbers. Or extort a company for its proprietary information. It's particularly ingenious. They say to the company, 'We have all your clients' information. Purchase it from us and we'll help you patch the vulnerability in your system. Or else, we put it out on the Internet.' We may not even find out about it," Tarchak said, "because it's not in the company's interest to tell us."

Were there specific cases locally, I asked. He smiled ruefully. He wasn't able to divulge that.

"Third group," he said, consulting his notes again, "probably ties into your story. Groups of younger people, more analogous to traditional street crime, with the caveat that they're a little more flexible, and more sophisticated. May be involved in weapons sales, fraud, drugs. Probably kids of post-Soviet emigrés, somewhat Americanized. I supervise a squad dedicated to Eurasian street crime. It's often difficult to get victims within the Russian community to cooperate. One reason is fear of reprisal -- these gangs have a propensity for violence. Two, is ingrained distrust of law enforcement." Can you spell KGB?

Unfortunately, he said, he could not reveal how many agents were in his squad. Nor could he tell me whether either Dmitriy or his father Victor were known to the FBI.

Maria Leonova arrived at Cinderella Bakery, a Russian restaurant, wearing a white faux-fur jacket, and gold hoop earrings. Her makeup was flawless. As a matter of fact, at 19, she appeared to be flawless. She was accompanied by her friend Kristina Kirilkina, another stunning girl, ballerina-thin, with a narrow face and a long, chestnut ponytail.

Maria, I had been told, was Dmitriy's girlfriend.

"You wouldn't put it together like girlfriend," Maria said, when we were all sipping hot tea from tall glasses. "It was never official, he never wanted commitment. All I know is, he always liked ladies to be around him."

"Pretty ladies," Kristina said.

"He had a very good heart," Maria continued. "His personality was magnetic to everybody. He was hard-core, though. He presented himself as the boss. If someone said something wrong, or looked wrong, he would check them. Nobody ever messed with him, here in San Francisco."

"Wasn't there some kind of run-in with Ukranian guys from Sacramento?" I asked.

"He had some kind of problem," Kristina agreed.

"Y'know," Maria said, "there's always been trouble. He wanted everybody to know what he had. Sometimes it made people angry -- 'Who is this?' "

Both girls were sneaking sideways looks at themselves in the wall mirror. Under her coat, Maria turned out to be wearing a black sweater that showed off considerable décolletage.

"Who do you think killed him?"

"If we knew that, it would already be taken care of," said Maria. "Killing Chuck was glory for someone. It was, like, a hired hit."

"Of course," said Kristina.

"Kristina," I asked, "how old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Chuck?" I said to Maria. "That's what you called Dmitriy?"

"You ever see Chuckie in the movie?" Kristina answered. "The doll was crazy. So if you get him mad, he's going to be crazy, too." That would explain Dmitriy's nom de rap Chuck the Beast. And his dog that somebody had hung as a warning had also been Chuck.

I had been trying to catch up with Edvin Amzayan, who had been with Dmitriy when he was murdered, but all I got was his answering machine.

"Edvin went to Russia, to take care of something," Maria said. "The only person who could solve it, who's not doing anything, is Edvin. I'm furious. If something like this happened to Edvin, Chuck would turn the world upside down."

"Did you get the sense that when Dmitriy came back to town in October, after he was in L.A. and Las Vegas, that he was on the run?"

"Yeah, I felt something," Maria said. "Because he was constantly with me, he didn't want to go outside. Sunday, out of nowhere, he called out to me. How he cares for his friends, deeply. How he wants to move up in the world. How he wanted me to succeed in my dream of being a lawyer. He called me Mushka, y'know? Because I'm not such a loud girl. Mushka means mouse. He said, 'Mushka, I need a girl who can be a lawyer and protect my ass. I need a smart girl by my side.'"

Our meat dumplings, pelmeni, arrived.

"Basically," Maria said, "I think he wanted to be a mafiosa, like his father. A 'mobsta.' "

"He would have accomplished that, too," said Kristina, with conviction.

Seyram Amzayan, Edvin's father, returned my phone call at about 10 on a Wednesday night.

"Edvin's not here," he said. "He is in Russia. The place he stays, it is no place there. It is like village in mountain. He goes because he has some back problems."

"Is he coming back?"

"Of course. He's my son. Of course he's coming back. If he's going to be there, I move there myself."

"And that's the only reason Edvin went, to have his back problems looked after?"

"He was scared, too," said his father. "He was together when it happened. He was close friend, like brother to him. Better he is over there."

But scared of what? Of whom?

Luda Romasenko resolutely stood by her son's friend. But a close family friend, Rebecca Young, could not forget what she had seen at the funeral. Edvin, a tall, handsome young man, had played second fiddle to Dmitriy's star turn. "Edvin couldn't lift his head. He looked pitiful. Maybe because of the moral weight of watching his best friend die. I kept my eyes on him. He sat next to Luda, and Luda put her arm around him."

Michael Kuperman is a handsome young man, with dark hair and pale skin, who appears to have exceptional confidence and aplomb for someone of 23. At the Chinese restaurant where we met in Palo Alto, near where he works as an information technologies director, he immediately assumed command.

"What kind of soup do you like?" he asked, before suggesting the hot-and- sour.

He and Dmitriy, he said, met in grade school and remained friends. "We became very close. I saw him a couple of times a week; we'd go to dinner, hang out at my house." Although only a few years older, Michael was a grown-up in a way the kids who clustered around Dmitriy were not.

"We'd go to jujitsu together, at an academy in South San Francisco. He was muscular, really built." He spread his hands wide of his shoulders to show how big Dmitriy had been. "And short. Stocky, I guess.

"He carried himself really well. It always seemed he had 10 times more than he really did. He just worked freelance projects." Dmitriy got gigs as a personal trainer, sold sharp clothes he bought in Los Angeles on Ebay. "He worked a little for me, actually." Michael and a cousin have an international business, the nature of which he asked me not to disclose. But apparently he's doing well -- he arrived for lunch driving a Cadillac Escalade. "He was very artistic, designing Web sites. He was my friend, I wanted to help him out. I sold him my car at a very good price, as part of a payment. The Lincoln Mark VIII. It had all sorts of goodies. He was making money, but it's hard to keep up the illusion that you're worth more than you really are.

"He could be very loud, in your face. Talk about anything, you felt like he knew what he was talking about. Go to a black-tie event, or a rap concert, and fit in. He was a really good actor. But when nobody was around, he was funny, caring, sincere."

For a while, we talked in detail about what had happened the night Dmitriy was killed. Edvin had told Michael that Dmitriy screamed at him to make a U-turn, follow him to the other side of Fulton. But by the time Edvin got there, Dmitriy lay sprawled on the sidewalk, with people hovering over him.

"What does Edvin think happened, Michael?"

He turned his palms up, momentarily at a loss for words. "He doesn't really say what he thinks." Michael picked up his chopsticks, his eyes turned inward.

"You miss Dmitriy?"

He nodded. "I don't know if the police are doing as much as they can do. They're looking in the wrong direction. The Russian mafiya, whatever. This is not New York, exactly."

"Is there a Russian mafiya here?"

He smiled. "Good question."

"Was Dmitriy dealing?"

"No, he was 100 percent dedicated to his music."

"Do you think it was a hit-for-hire?"

"No. If it was, it would have been much quieter. Somebody really serious got p.o.'d."

"Six shots," I said. "Tight pattern. Camouflage gear. The guy just walks away."

"Or maybe," Michael said, "It's more like you shoot until you're out." The cops were not saying what kind of weapon had been used; it was information they were saving to use with suspects. "Or it jams. I shoot guns all the time. I think if he's a professional, just one or two shots, one to the head. And because he ran away -- he didn't know if Dmitriy's dead, or what. If I was a professional like that, I'd quit my job."

"Have you heard talk of revenge?" On what had been Dmitriy's Web site, www.mobliferecords.org, friends and family recorded memorial messages. Someone named Igor had written: "Nothing in our life will be forgiven or forgotten." And another message, from Alex, promised, "Eye 4 Eye."

"Nobody's saying that," Michael answered. "I don't know if anybody's thinking it. There's nobody to take revenge on yet, y'know?"

Stasko was frustrated. It was the first week of March, nearly four months after the murder, and he wanted to talk again with Edvin, but couldn't. "I've got three search warrants for phone records," Stasko said. He wanted to learn more about who, in Dmitriy's inner circle, had been talking, and to whom, on Nov. 15, 2003, and in the days immediately before.

Then there were the rappers. Guys with names like Mr. Red Eyez, Cutthroat and Mr. Swinla. Couldn't locate them either.

"So you're making progress," I said.

"To me it feels like a quagmire," Stasko said of his first homicide investigation. "I also got this other 187," the penal code section for murder, "that occurred on Guerrero, that's really hot. So I'm stretched really thin here. I'm also the athletic director for St. Phillip's grammar school, so I don't get any sleep anymore."

Some of his frustration came from the insular, opaque world of the Russian American community. The first emigrants to arrive here in great numbers, in the 1970s, were Jews and refuseniks escaping the Soviet state; then came a wave of new arrivals in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite governments in Eastern Europe. Most of the estimated 75,000 Russians in the Bay Area had been here for only a decade or two. When I talked to Dmitriy's friends, associates and family, I felt as if I understood most of the lyrics but could not hear the melody across the cultural divide. Many Russians profoundly mistrusted the state apparatus, and where they came from that often included journalists as well as cops. That was before the collapse of Communism. Here's what U.S. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, the former chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, had to say about post-Soviet Russia: "It is truly impossible in many instances to differentiate between Russian organized crime and the Russian state."

Then there was the victim. Who was Dmitriy Romasenko? He was a young man who seemed to have as many identities as cats have lives. In 21 years he had accumulated a legion of adoring friends and admirers -- 160 people attended his funeral; and, also, many people who might have had the desire, as well as the means, to see him dead.

In the Chekovian version of the proverb, you could say the cherry doesn't fall very far from the orchard. His mysterious father, Victor Romasenko, seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. Stasko showed me a photograph of him: He was tiny, with a deep chest. When, at age 14, Dmitriy had fallen in with the Soreños and run afoul of the law, Victor had come over. He stayed long enough to acquire a California driver's license, in October 1996.

"I hate him. I hate him more than anything in my life," Luda said to me. "Not hate, dread." In Ukraine, though, she said, "He considers himself like a saint. People love him, and pray for him."

Only a few weeks before Dmitriy was gunned down, Luda said, he met with his father for the first time since 1997, in New York. Had they really met? Was the meeting only because Dmitriy needed a copy of his birth certificate to complete his passport application, as Luda said? For this, father and son both had to travel to New York? Was there a connection between that meeting and the murder: Had enemies of the father taken vengeance on the son?

Victor had not come to his son's funeral. He had, however, posted a memorial message on www.mobliferecords.org:

"For my mourn I can't find the measure, and can't express it with words. During the long time the doom followed us persistently. For a long time my dear son I was looking for you and when I finally found you ... then I lost you forever."

Johnny Baldini is never still. The 19-year old all but dances when he talks, and he talks a blue streak. Dmitriy and Edvin were his homeboys, even though he's not Russian but Irish-Italian. He said he spent a year in jail when he was 16, and like Dmitriy, did a stint at a straighten-up-and-fly-right place in Arizona. Pale, with a small head and a buzz cut, he was wearing a baggy black Giants jersey, loose over floppy velour workout pants.

"You know how much jewelry Dmitriy had on, man? Fifteen thousand worth. Had to be. See this bracelet, man? He gave it to me. You know what Cartier is? He had a bracelet three times as thick, from Cartier's. Two big rings, gold with diamonds. Big-a -- chain that said MOB. All diamonds. Had a Movado watch.

"Went over this like 3 million times in my mind, man. He was the type of person, didn't care who he f -- over, man. Owed a lot of people money, man. Always wanted to be in the spotlight. Double-parked his big-a -- Jaguar in the middle of the street. You wanted to find him? Easy as cutting cake, man. His porn star, man? Basically, she bought him that Jag. She spent $30,000 for it. It had a TV, man. Had 28-inch rims -- when you stop, they keep spinning. Basically, Dmitriy just took it from her. And I guess there was bad blood between her and him. Her husband, man? He called and said, 'We want that car back.' When Dmitriy was planning to go to Russia? Couple weeks before he died? Car got conveniently stolen. Stripped. No more car, man.

"I learned a fat-a -- lesson, man," said Johnny, who had begun our talk by asking me if there were any jobs going at The Chronicle, where he said he once worked. "I don't want to live like Dmitriy was living. I'm looking for a job, man."

"I finally caught up with the porno queen, down in L.A.," Stasko said in early April. "She's scared. She's on antidepressants and god knows what else. Eyes dilated. Mouth dry. She told me Dmitriy threatened the life of her kid. But everything else we heard, he was trying to help her get custody. And she's got Dmitriy's name tattooed on her wedding ring finger, in scroll.

"And I got the full phone records," he said, holding up a thick black binder. "Just for the month of October, I've got 1,226 calls for Dmitriy. September - 1,860.

"And do you know we've got another Russian homicide?" Stasko continued. "Guy found out at Fort Funston." Near the beach. Could this be the retaliation that Kelly Carroll had predicted? "Somebody somewhere is going to wind up with his throat cut."

Stasko read my excitement. "It's a brand-new homicide, so don't jump to conclusions."

Conclusions? Nyat. But a coincidence?

"It is quite a coincidence, don't you think?" said Inspector Holly Pera, who was investigating the murder of the young man, named Eugene Gorenman. Gorenman had been shot early on Monday morning, March 29, sometime between 1 and 5 a.m. "We don't have that many murders in the Russian community, and then to have two of them within a few months."

Pera and her partner, Inspector Joe Toomey, talked with me in a tiny interrogation room. Even though I was a reporter, not a suspect, out of long habit Pera sat opposite me, while Toomey set up a chair in a corner, where he could watch me. For cops, suspicion is an occupational hazard.

"The body was found just beyond the first bunker tunnel," Pera said. "A long way from anything. You get to it on a narrow path."

"Battery Davis, left over from the Second World War," said Toomey, a man known for his insistence on facts, an old-school, Joe Friday-type cop. Pera, on the other hand, is emotive. They have their own spin on the good-cop, bad- cop thing: stern daddy and sympathetic mommy. "The location of the body throws everything off as a regular street robbery," Toomey said.

"Eugene graduated from UC Berkeley," Pera said. "He was working as a software engineer for PG&E at the time of his death. He had no criminal record, nor does he hang in the criminal world. He was very involved in the Russian community. He was connected to www.GarageSF.com. They put on big parties, charge $20 or something.

"About six months ago, he had a verbal beef at one of his parties," Pera continued. According to the people he had gone up against, it was alcohol- induced. "Our victim made some comment that sort of sounded like he was a little better than they were." Then two weeks before he was murdered, "he bumped into these people again. He said, 'Let bygones be bygones.' And these guys are friends of Dmitriy. One is Mike Kuperman." Dmitriy's best friend since childhood, the self-assured young IT engineer. "And Boris Meleschinsky." Another good friend of Dmitriy's.

"And you know who walks his dog out there?" asked Toomey. "Mike."

"Mike Kuperman is not a suspect, and neither is his friend Boris," Pera said. "We do not have a suspect. We're just trying to figure out what the motive would be."

Mike Stasko had just returned from a Hawaii vacation. He was pink and freckled.

"Yeah, it's interesting that Mike Kuperman's name has come up in two different investigations," Stasko said. "He's not a suspect, because he's a boyhood friend. But, see, whenever you got a name that keeps popping up, you gotta say, 'Wait a minute.' " There was, however, nothing that had turned up so far connecting the two victims, Gorenman and Dmitriy.

Meanwhile, Stasko kept doggedly trying to find whoever killed Dmitriy. "This thing's been a pain in my side. Fighting tooth and nail to do right by the family and the victim, and they call you names. They say you're not working.

"But it seems like the tone of the investigation is going to change." He now had hundreds of pages of phone records. "Nothing I was told" about who had talked to whom on the evening Dmitriy was killed, "jibes with the records. It's like everybody's got a prepared script. This guy was very private. I can't even figure out where he lived.

"The first interviews weren't confrontational. Now we're going to have a little bit more truthful interviews. Sorry -- not truthful, structured."

Sounding confident as ever, Michael Kuperman said he knew "nothing at all, " about Eugene Gorenman's death. "I barely knew the guy's first name. A couple of words were exchanged. Maybe six months ago. Then a few weeks before."

"What do you make of your name coming up in both inquiries?"

"Well, it's coincidence," he said. "I'm Dmitriy's best friend." That accounted for the first investigation. As for the Gorenman case: "That one was just wrong place, wrong time."

Nonetheless, he understood that suspicions had been aroused. As they say on "NYPD Blue," he had lawyered up.

I went over to the memorial to Dmitriy at 17th Avenue and Fulton. It was five months to the day since he was murdered. As always, there were fresh flowers, potted plants, notes left by friends, an album cover featuring Chasey Lain that Dmitriy had considered for his CD. Luda Romasenko goes there most every day. So does Maria Leonova, Mushka, who says she feels safe there. Neighbors say that people come by at night and rap, playing loud music.

The police are not much closer to figuring out who killed Dmitriy Romasenko than they were 72 hours after it went down, when Inspector Kelly Carroll laid out the contours of the case. Stasko had filled in a lot of detail, but the picture is still obscured in the shadows of Dmitriy's life. Rumors are legion, including one that involves Chinese triads, bent cops and a dope debt never paid. Victor Romasenko's son was no saint. But in death, as in life, he continues to be, as one of his friends said to me, "kind of a legend."

As I stood there, two boys of 10 or 11 came by walking a small black dog. They stopped to stare at the makeshift memorial. One said to his pal,

"Hey, the guy was a rapper."