The comms for this are probably related to this novel: La verità dell’Alligatore (1995).
"Author Massimo Carlotto was the subject of a controversial legal case that resulted in a prison sentence for murder and then pardon by the president of Italy. His main character, Marco Buratti, alias The Alligator, suffered more or less the same fate and now muddles along as an unlicensed investigator. In this debut novel, The Alligator investigates a murder in the world of bourgeois Padova and uncovers a squalid web of prostitution, blackmail, and cocaine."