The culprit and motive behind Arkan's killing may fuel speculation, but his violent death surprised few in this city where he was both notorious as a mafia thug, war profiteer and killer, and celebrated as a Serbian patriot, paramilitary leader and husband of the country's most beloved pop star, Svetlana Velickovic -- also known as Ceca.

Arkan, 47, was the leader of a notoriously ruthless paramilitary group, the Tigers, which committed atrocities in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, for which Arkan was indicted for war crimes. He was also the owner of a casino in the Hotel Yugoslavia -- which was bombed by NATO last spring -- a Belgrade pastry shop and the country's premier soccer team, Obilic.

But Arkan reportedly became one of Serbia's richest men by busting sanctions and awarding himself lucrative oil and gas concessions in Serbian-held Bosnia and Yugoslavia -- a business in which he reportedly competed with Milosevic's son, Marko. He also recruited volunteers to the Tigers with the incentive that they could plunder the homes and steal the possessions of the thousands of Muslims, Croats and Albanians they killed, raped or expelled. Arkan originally recruited his paramilitaries from the Red Star football club, where he was president of the soccer fan association. When the U.N. war crime tribunal made public it's indictment of Arkan last spring, it was hoping to discourage would-be paramilitaries from signing on and killing in Kosovo.

The fact that Arkan became so ostentatiously wealthy and powerful -- by straddling the worlds of organized crime, state-sanctioned ethnic violence and legitimate business -- symbolizes how morally bankrupt and corrupt Serbia has become under Milosevic. That crime pays more than anything else here is obvious. But Milosevic has also helped engineer a system in which those who seek to profit in business, government and other endeavors are corrupted. Now that some of those figures are looking for a way out of sanctions-beleaguered Yugoslavia -- and are considering offering international authorities information on Milosevic in exchange for the right to travel abroad, regain access to frozen bank accounts and immunity from prosecution by the U.N. tribunal -- they pose a threat to Milosevic. And the stakes have become high for them, apparently, as well.

Arkan's life of crime and connections to the Serbian government, however, precede Milosevic. Born in 1952 in Slovenija, Zeljko Raznatovic was reportedly a delinquent teenager whose father -- a senior air force officer in Tito's military -- asked if the Yugoslav security services could put him to work.

Raznatovic reportedly became a professional hit man for the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, assassinating Croatian nationalists in Europe who were considered enemies of the state. A convicted armed robber and quasi-Houdini, Arkan mysteriously escaped from prisons in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and even from a Swedish courtroom where he was being tried, reportedly with the help of the Yugoslav security service. One of the fake passports he was issued by the Yugoslav security services was said to be in the name Arkan, which he adopted as a nickname.

But it was under Milosevic that Arkan rose from bank robber to Serbian icon.

Until his murder, Arkan was an untouchable and unrivaled mafia king in Belgrade, where organized crime flourishes and good people keep their heads down and eyes averted in resignation to the more powerful forces of corruption, the endless drone of official lying and the gangland violence all around. Arkan, his rock star wife, Ceca (they were married during the height of the Bosnian war, with Arkan decked out in a World War I Serbian general's uniform), and their two children lived in an enormous pink villa with a glass elevator down the street from Milosevic's house in the exclusive neighborhood of diplomats and high government officials called Dedinje.

Surrounded by bodyguards, dressed in expensive suits and accompanied by his glamorous wife, Arkan would show up at his favorite hangouts -- mostly hotels like the one he was killed at, so expensive that the cost of one night's stay far exceeds most people's monthly salaries. His showy entrances were announced by the arrival of his unmistakable fleet of armored sports utility vehicles -- the sight of which struck terror in the hearts of non-Serbs who were brutalized by his ruthless paramilitary Tigers in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia. The navy-blue SUV he was driven in on the night of his assassination, with the license plate number BG-19-99, still stood parked outside the hotel the day after Arkan's mortally wounded body had been removed.

"Many people here liked Arkan," said one Belgrade waiter who asked not to be named. "He paid 400 German deutsche marks pension to every family of his volunteer guards. He gave money to the orphanage on Tirsova Street. He was fighting to defend Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo."

In addition to rumors that Arkan could serve as a witness linking Milosevic to war crimes, Arkan was also reported to support the pro-Western president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who has championed the independence of Montenegro from Milosevic's Yugoslavia. Djukanovic was quoted Monday as saying that he might extradite Milosevic to The Hague if he came to Montenegro, making Milosevic's stomping grounds in the Yugoslavia he has helped destroy ever smaller.

Opposition politician Zoran Djindjic has credited Arkan with informing him during the NATO air strikes that his life was in danger from regime assassins, prompting Djindjic to seek refuge in Djukanovic's Montenegro.

In this atmosphere of politically motivated gangland violence, Arkan's murder prompts the inevitable question of who's next?

Analysts point to other figures who may know too much about Milosevic's direct complicity in war crimes. High on the list are Jovica Stanisic, the former head of the Serbian state security service, fired by Milosevic last year; Franko Simatovic, a paramilitary warlord known as "Frenki," whose paramilitary thugs were active in killings in Kosovo; and Radovan Karadzic, who served as the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs and is the most sought-after war crimes suspect in Bosnia.

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