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 How Chicago fit the bill was about to become clearer.

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Why would the Archduke choose Chicago as a place to learn about foreign people, other than people foreign to the Archduke live there, I guess? I could speculate or just stick to this sentence whose sole purpose is telling the reader, "This sentence is only here to prepare you for the revelation of this future fact! Get ready! It'll be here soon!" So, you know, this sentence is sort of worthless on its own. It's a little bit jokey, pointing out that the Archduke is looking to learn about the world's people and this sentence is all, "Yeah, but in Chicago? Ha ha! Good luck, dumb-dumb!"

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 F.F., as he was termed in his dossier, was out on a world tour whose officially stated purpose was to "learn about foreign peoples."

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"learn about foreign peoples."
I once wanted to "learn" about foreign peoples but then I was called gross for "fetishizing" race. I'm sorry that I had an unhealthy obsession with Sailor Moon during college! F.F. isn't gross though because he's not describing an unhealthy attraction for certain people based on their race; he just wants to go around the world and try a little bit of everyone.

Some of you might also be thinking, "You weren't just gross for fetishizing race! You were also gross for sexualizing young girls!" But in my defense, the Sailor Scouts were cartoon characters. Also in my defense, I was being facetious. Yet still more in my defense, I did have an unhealthy obsession with Sailor Moon but it wasn't because I was sexaulizing anything; it was all about the nostalgia of being young and discovering love for the first time and the ease of making lifelong friends. There also may have been a hint of desiring to be a young, attractive girl. Like maybe 10% of my infatuation with the show was nostalgic rewriting of my past in which I was a girl fantasy roleplay.

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 "Somebody get Rewrite!" Lew pretended to cry, affably enough.

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I'm counting this as two lines even though, given the peculiarity of language and punctuation, it is arguably one sentence. I feel like Lew has yelled, "Somebody get Rewrite!" (apparently Quirkel's nickname) and then pretended to cry about Nate's choice of partner for him, although in an obviously good-natured way.

Since we're in some kind of magical realist Chicago where Lew Basnight can "step to the side" of space and time, it's not outrageous to believe that somebody with the nickname "Rewrite" has some special abilities of his own. Or maybe Lew just made up this nickname, riffing on Nate's mention of somebody hiding in an alley attempting to rewrite history. Perhaps Lew is saying Quirkel is so bad at the job that this "rewriting of history" is all but assured by putting him on the case!

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 "I can spare Quirkel."

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I don't know who Quirkel is but he's probably not going to be much help if Nate can "spare" him. Also his name is reminiscent of "quirky" so he's probably going to be a loose cannon, which also fits the laws of Buddy Cop Movies.

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 "I get any backup on this, Nate?"

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This is a fair question. Only a maniac like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Dolph Lundgren would think, "I am capable of defending this man from hundreds of potential assassins." And they only think that because the script usually says something like, "John Matrix is the kind of man who never runs out of ammunition and never gets hit by a bullet while murdering hundreds of opponents simultaneously."

It's also possible that Arnold does think he could pull a John Matrix in real life. But I doubt it because if you've got that kind of confidence, you don't fuck your maid. You fuck everybody else's maids.

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 "Sure do, they call em 'Trabants' over there, but have a lawyer explain civil liability to you, Lew, I'm just an old gumshoe guy, all's I know is there's a couple a thousand hunkies down to the Yards come over here with hate in their hearts for this bird and his family, maybe with good reason, too. If it was just the wholesome educational exhibits on the Fairgrounds and all why I wouldn't be too concerned, but the book on young Francis Ferdinand is, is he prefers our own New Levee and high-life neighborhoods like that. So every alleyway down here, every shadow big enough to hide a shive artist with a grudge, is a warm invitation to rewrite history."

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"'Trabants'"
The word means "companion." That's a pretty euphemistic term for a bodyguard. "These eighteen large men are my companions." I wonder if Tolkien was using the term "companion" in this sort of way in The Lord of the Rings? Frodo didn't have eight companions; he had eight bodyguards.

"civil liability"
Why would Lew have to concern himself with civil liability if Ferdinand gets hurt? My guess is that Ferdinand must have hired White City Investigations as extra protection. Your Trabants, being in foreign territory, might not know what kinds of dangers to watch out for. So it's always best to hire a local guide as a bodyguard. I should have remembered this advice, having heard the song "You Can Call Me Al" at least ten thousand times.

"couple a thousand hunkies down to the Yards"
This is the first time I've heard the slur "hunkies." It's a disparaging term referring to a person from East-central Europe, especially, like those hunkies down at the Yards, laborers. I guess East-central Europeans really fucking hated Archduke Ferdinand. They aren't going to kill him on this trip though, probably because Ferdinand's got a good driver this trip and not a stupid driver who makes a stupid wrong turn down the stupid wrong alley to wind up face-to-face with a stupid assassin who previously stupidly missed his chance to kill the stupid Archduke.

"maybe with good reason, too"
In high school, you learn that World War I began because Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated but they really lay off all the ethnic cleansing that was behind it. Maybe that was just my high school. To be absolutely fair, maybe it was just my attention span.

"he prefers our own New Levee and high-life neighborhoods"
The Archduke wants to explore places other than the World's Fair. Places where—gasp!—anarchists might be lurking!

"So every alleyway down here, every shadow big enough to hide a shive artist with a grudge, is a warm invitation to rewrite history"
This is pretty good foreshadowing of Archduke's eventual demise! I wonder if Gavrilo Princip thought, when he saw the Archduke's car trying to make a three point turn in a tight alley, thought, "A-ha! An invitation to rewrite history!", set down his coffee, and casually strolled into the history books.

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 "Fellows like that don't have bodyguards of their own?"

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I guess Lew thinks like me. Why shouldn't this assignment be about protection? It would be sort of slimy and underhanded and totally within the boundaries of capitalism to spy on the guy in an attempt to make a little cash off of any information gleaned.

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 "Austrian Archduke is in town, we need somebody to keep an eye on him."

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Since Lew is known for being invisible, does this mean Nate wants Lew to spy on a foreign leader? My first thought was the Archduke needed protection while in the city but that was probably prompted by my knowledge of what happens to the Archduke twenty years later. But what kind of protection can one lousy detective promise? I'm sure Nate is interested in selling any secrets his company can manage to rustle up.

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 "Not me," Lew edging away.

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Lew knows a bad assignment when he sees a thick folder with a royal emblem on it.

"Lew edging away"
I'm going to assume this means Lew tried to move away from Nate and not that Lew was very slowly jerking off. Although the one thing Lew is known for is his sinful reputation, so maybe?

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 Nate showed up at Lew's desk one day with a thick folder that had some kind of royal crest on it, featuring a two-headed eagle.

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The Internet informs me that the double-headed eagle crest was being used by the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time of the Chicago World's Fair. My memory from having read this chapter previously was that Franz Ferdinand is coming to visit the Chicago World's Fair and needs better protection than he's going to get in two decades in Sarajevo.

It's an ancient symbol found in various places in the ancient world. I suspect the ancients, knowing that they didn't have full knowledge of their entire world, could easily believe in two-headed creatures. Some Greek jerk out tending to his sheep probably saw two eagles sitting in a tree but from his perspective, it looked like a two-headed bird and he shrugged and thought, "I guess those exist." Then he kicked the grass and turned back to look at his sheep where two of them were off in the distance at the top of a hill. But from his perspective, it just looked like a sheep with two asses and no head. So he shrugged and thought, "I guess those exist."