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Shukhrat Madalimov was a young doctor with a family and a promising future. Why was he gunned down in a killing that had all the trappings of a mafia hit?

Dr. Shukhrat Madalimov pulled out of his parking garage at 9 a.m. Feb. 11 and started along a narrow road near Patrisa Lumumby Street when he found his way blocked by a car.

To the right was a wall of steel garage doors, to the left a steep drop. As the 26-year-old surgeon braked, the car suddenly rammed into his vehicle, trying to shove him off the cliff. He jumped out and fled, but the someone sprang out of the other car, police say. The assailant fired three times from a small-caliber gun, killing the doctor.

The apparent contract murder of a doctor was almost unheard of in Vladivostok. But Madalimov’s death — followed Feb. 12 by the slaying of 28-year-old businessman Maxim Ostrokhanov and alleged mafia don Vrezh Babakekhyan Feb. 17 — was the latest in a series of contract killings that have hit the city within the past year.

Since June, killers have gunned down mafia bosses and businessmen, shot dead a special forces policeman as he walked his dog one evening, and murdered a husband and wife evidently by burying them alive.

Added to the unsuccessful homicide attempts — car bombings, non-fatal shootings, and a case in which two brothers were convicted in January of trying to assassinate a businessman by lobbing a grenade into his hospital room — and Vladivostok can be a dangerous place for some.

But the danger, many officials agree, is greatest for those involved in crime or dealing on the “gray market,” the shadow realm between legitimate business and mafia dealings. And it is here that Madalimov, a poor doctor trying to support a young family, may have made his mistake.

“The most realistic version is that he was killed for his commercial deals,” said Alexander Zaimenko, head of the Krai Police Criminal Department. “And he owed money to many people.”

Madalimov was a Tajik who had gone to medical school in Uzbekistan but moved to Vladivostok after ethnic rioting there. He was a diligent worker at the city Children’s Clinical Hospital, said doctors who knew him (most asked that their names not be used). He was willing to hold scalpels and clamps for other doctors during surgery — some doctors refuse to do this — yet the rookie surgeon also conducted appendectomies and other operations. Parents appreciated his understandable explanations of their children’s conditions. When the doctors had barbecues in the woods, Madalimov always whipped up an Uzbek pilaf.

“I personally don’t know why this (killing) would happen,” said Galina Dubovik, chief physician of the hospital where Madalimov worked. “He was a very easygoing and intelligent person. ... He was never in conflict with anyone.”

But he was also a man with mysterious connections. His aunt, a former driver for a venereal disease clinic who practiced “clairvoyant healing,” was brutally murdered in Vladivostok two years ago. Papers reported then that her healing center had ties to the mafia.

At the Children’s Hospital, Madalimov volunteered to work night shift because he had other business to take care of during the day: a car wash and a tire stand in a First River automobile market. After all, as a beginning doctor he only earned $100 a month, and he had a wife and 4-year-old daughter to support.

Over time, the phone started ringing in the Children’s Hospital surgery ward: Angry callers wanted to talk to Madalimov. They never gave their names. When staff called him to the phone, he would say, “Tell them I’m not here.”

“We warned him,” said one doctor. “We told him, ‘Don’t involve the hospital in your dealings.’”

Nobody is sure what was going on, but according to newspapers this week, someone from the Mikho gang once talked to Madalimov (the gang was named for mob boss Mikhail “Mikho” Osipov, who was shot dead in October outside the Hyundai Hotel). And there was a previous attempt on Madalimov’s life, newspapers reported.

The automobile market where Madalimov traded is a concrete-walled compound filled with booths and battered vans selling steering wheels and floor pads and hubcaps and brake lights and windshield wipers. There is a row of ship cargo containers overflowing with tires, and here Madalimov sold his wares. The day after the killing, six or eight traders gathered in a tight huddle, reading a newspaper account of the slaying. On the front page was a photograph of doctor’s crumpled body, a scarf swirled round his neck.

The group melted away when a reporter started asking about Madalimov. When the reporter followed traders to their stands, the few who reluctantly spoke wouldn’t give their names. A man who had worked for Madalimov said the doctor paid him regularly, but he hadn’t seen him in months. Another trader said people at the market don’t cause problems for each other.

“All the people who work here are OK people,” he said. “Nobody threatens them.”

But when asked if traders pay a cut to the mafia, he said, “Of course.”

A thickset man with stout gold rings on his fingers heard the question and moved over to amplify. Cracking sunflower seeds in his teeth, he said the vendors simply pay the market administration a security fee, because some cars are left there overnight. He spat a shell. There is no mafia involvement, he said.

At first glance, the murder of the surgeon stands in contrast to the killings that followed. People are used to murders of those who engage in a certain kind of business, and papers suggested Ostrokhanov may have had a large sum of cash on him when he was shot twice through the torso outside his garage. And Babakekhyan was a reported mafia boss. But the killing of a beloved children’s doctor made no sense.

On closer inspection, however, fellow surgeons say Madalimov’s slaying may fit a pattern familiar to Vladivostok.

“We saw it all coming,” said one doctor. “I wasn’t surprised.”