Keitel was, Olmos told various media, "out of control", "the real Bad Lieutenant", "vicious and disturbed", and didn't even "want Stella" but was "using the situation to hurt Lorraine and myself". Later, sources close to the Olmoses told the gossip columnist Cindy Adams that they had "written documents" to "prove" that Keitel had enlisted De Niro, Scorsese and Joe Pesci in a "conspiracy" to blacklist Olmos and Bracco in Hollywood.In fact, Bracco hasn't been working. During that time, RG's mother, an old friend of both Keitel and Bracco's, had asked Bracco for $75,000 to help set up a catering business. Purportedly, this was before she knew of RG's problems, and Bracco turned her down; then, after the mother received RG's letter, she informed Linda Fairstein. The family originally asked for $750,000 to settle out of court. Although the published amount of the final settlement, in May 1993, was $150,000, one former associate of Olmos's maintains the figure was "successful press spin" and that Eddie actually paid $300,000 over a period of time, then "got out ahead of Harvey on damage control" when Keitel went public in October 1993. that the press would be on this [and that] the truth never catches up to an allegation like this." Olmos also contended that Bracco had begged him not to tell Keitel, fearing his violent reaction.So from November 1992 to October 1993, Keitel was unaware of the alleged molestations.
But, characteristically, he cited good reasons: "fear" had kept him from facing down RG's charges, he told the court, because he'd wanted to protect his son and because "I knew this young woman had an assistant district attorney from the Bronx [her uncle, who negotiated the monetary settlement with Olmos's lawyer, Jim Schreiber] and the .. Sex Crimes prosecutor [Linda Fairstein] defending her [sic] I knew it would cost an extraordinary amount .. to defend myself ... He presented Bracco with a welcome change from Keitel's angst. Where Harvey was chronically upset, Eddie was relentlessly upbeat. He was such a great talker that he'd once persuaded the warden of Folsom prison to let him film inside the walls, using inmates as extras.
Clinton invited him (with Bracco) to the 1993 Inauguration.He'd been dividing his time between his Encino home and his life with Bracco when the RG allegations broke. During custody hearings in 1995, he admitted he'd chosen "the worst of two evils" by opting to pay RG's family and not tell Keitel. Of course, once she'd admitted that she'd been having an affair, "there were three years of raging about Eddie," says Bracco.Olmos, well-known from his signature role as Lieutenant Martin Castillo in the Eighties TV series Miami Vice, had parlayed his image as "Pacific Rim man", part-actor, part-activist, representing the rising Hispanic- Asian minorities of California, into a hybrid career. Its main dividends in 1991, when he'd literally replaced Keitel in his own home, had been Stand and Deliver, a critical success about an inspirational maths teacher in east LA's barrio (for which he was Oscar-nominated), and American Me, but he was becoming prominent in Democratic politics too.
