FBI Agent’s True Tale of Hollywood : Deals: The producers of ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ option the novel about the FBI by Paul Lindsay, who could be fired by the agency.

From FBI agent Paul Lindsay’s vantage point, it’s a “good news, bad news” story. In October, his first novel, “Witness to the Truth: A Novel of the FBI,” was published by Random House and has sold 30,000 copies in the first two months.

To add to his bounty, the crime thriller--submitted in longhand to a New York agent selected out of the rookie resource guide “The Writer’s Market”--has been optioned by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun,” who plan to make it their joint directorial debut. Robert Towne (“Chinatown”) is about to tackle the screenplay and, if all goes well, the picture will be released late in 1994.

That takes the edge off the bad news: an FBI investigation of the Detroit-based Lindsay who, after 20 years on the job, may be fired only months before retirement.

The agency claims he violated a company ban on accepting outside income. The author contends that it’s not writing a book but accepting payment for it that’s against the rules. Technically, he points out, he sidestepped the problem by having his agent put the money in a trust. “I actually haven’t received a cent,” he says.

The author sees the proceedings as a smoke-screen, a reprimand for telling tales out of school. What set the agency off is his irreverent portrait of an organization on the wane, beset with a labor-management dispute between committed street agents, whom he calls “humps,” and the career-oriented higher-ups or “bureau-crat-rats.”

“It’s the old ‘We’re in charge here--how dare you?’ ” says the 49-year-old author who made his reputation tracking down federal fugitives, escaped prisoners and bond-jumpers. “By writing the book, I negated the agency’s power over me. Everything in the FBI manual is open to interpretation, and the closer you are to the interpreters, the likelier to get things approved. I just never kissed the right rings.”

Lindsay’s highly praised novel--a mix of grit and seen-it-all humor--centers on a maverick special agent named Mike Devlin who, like Lindsay himself, is a decorated Vietnam vet and specialist in serial killings. Frustrated by what Lindsay sees as the new FBI mentality in which, as the book jacket explains, “keeping America safe takes a back seat to brown-nosing and backbiting,” the agent secretly recruits a “Dirty Dozen”-type squad of renegades to weed out a Mafia informant and locate the kidnaped daughter of a fellow agent.

While writing, says the author, he saw movie scenes in his head. So did Simpson and Bruckheimer who, after receiving a copy of the unpublished manuscript, immediately put in a bid.

“(Director) John Ford had a well-known axiom: If you have five classic scenes in a movie, really memorable ones, you have a good chance of making a damn good movie,” Simpson says. “I told Paul he had seven or eight. There were actually about 35 of those scenes in the book. I didn’t want to pump him up too much though. I was trying to make a deal.”

Bruckheimer recalls taking Lindsay to dinner at Morton’s on a Monday night--providing him with an inside look at the Hollywood power scene. “Paul was pretty cool,” the producer notes. “If he was curious or felt awkward, it certainly didn’t show. But, then, Paul would make a good poker player. He’s a good actor. To be an FBI agent, you have to be.”

Lindsay has a slightly different take on the evening, which took place the week before last. “I’m a Chevrolet guy,” he says. “Jerry told me that the head of every Hollywood studio was there but, to me, they were just heads. As long as the food is good and someone else is paying, I don’t care.”

The producers were far more unnerved by their inside look at Detroit--Bruckheimer’s hometown--which Simpson now compares to the Third World.

“This movie will be about America’s heart attack, emanating from the place where the automobile was born,” Simpson says. “Corruption, racism, lack of government planning have turned it into a war zone. Lindsay knows that the war is unwinnable, that he’s just engaged in a holding action. In some ways, he told us, it’s worse than Vietnam.”

David Mamet (“The Untouchables,” “Homicide”) expressed interest in writing the screenplay but asked the producers to wait until he completed another project. Unwilling to do so, they contacted Larry Ferguson (“The Hunt for Red October,” “Beverly Hills Cop II”) who submitted a 30-page outline before jumping ship to direct another film. When Towne--with whom they’d worked on “Days of Thunder”--became available, he was hired and in January he’s expected to plunge in.

“Towne is so low-key, he seems almost distracted,” Lindsay observes, after a fact-finding mission the screenwriter had made to Detroit. “You think he’s not ‘getting it,’ but he’s loading it in all the time. One week after returning to L.A., he called to say that he was incorporating a cartoon posted in the bureau into a scene between Tom Cruise and an FBI agent in ‘The Firm’ (Paramount’s big-screen adaptation of John Grisham’s legal thriller). People say Towne can drive you crazy with his inextinguishable need to be accurate, but that’s probably why his screenplays do so well.”

Bruckheimer says that a worldwise “Michael Douglas-type” actor is being considered for the lead, though Douglas, himself, has yet to be officially approached. Nick Nolte turned them down because he didn’t want to play a cop again after “48 HRS.” and “Q&A.;” The producers have a production deal with Disney’s Hollywood Pictures, but, should the studio decide to pass on the film, they’re free to shop the project around. Early 1994 is being targeted for the shoot.

Lindsay, however, has more immediate concerns. In a week or so, he’ll be called to testify before FBI investigators and informed what punishment is in store. If things go well, he might receive a verbal reprimand or a letter of censure. If not, he could be docked up to two months pay or, worse yet, fired and denied his pension.

“I’m feeling the heat,” Lindsay acknowledges. “The FBI wants me to confess my sins--which I will. Putting the book out before retiring was a calculated risk. But waiting would have weakened my statement, relegating it to the grumbling of some disgruntled ex-employee.”

And what next? “If I am fired, I look forward to a writing career,” responds Lindsay. “I don’t want to be a bank guard.”

Not much danger of that. A lucrative paperback deal has been cut with Fawcett Books for “Witness to the Truth.” Random House has already purchased Lindsay’s as yet unwritten next novel. If push comes to shove, Simpson and Bruckheimer have offered to set him up in Hollywood where they’re convinced he’d made out like, well . . . like a bandit.

“There’s a lot more money in this town than there is talent,” Bruckheimer asserts. “Given the hunger for material, the man’s got a career.”