The other day we got a voicemail message, an attempt to place a collect call to us from someone in jail. I wonder who it was. Who do we know that might be a candidate for arrest?

There aren't as many mysterious phone calls as I would like. This is most likely due to several factors, including the technological conspiracy against anonymity and a general paucity of imagination these days, perverts and strange characters might be watching too much television instead of letting their feverish minds become naturally beclouded by swirling visions of their own devising. Of course you'd think the true sociopath wouldn't stop to consider the repercussions of Caller ID. In old movies and TV crime dramas people were always getting spooked by weird phone calls in the middle of the night, then we moved to a period where the savvy killer or sexual predator knew all about the call-tracing capabilities of the police and would hang up five seconds before his location could be identified. The phones were a lot bigger then, big chunky desk models that looked like they could survive a nuclear blast and made a pleasing solid sound when the black-gloved hand replaced the receiver in the cradle, a nice visual suggestion of sinister intent. I love when they just show the hand. It's not quite the same with cell phones. Think of The Conversation done with today's sleek tiny telephones.

Technological advances also mean no more crosstalk, no more party lines. Every once in a while you'd somehow find yourself eavesdropping on a conversation between strangers, or hear bizarre ghostly fragments floating in and out of your own. You'd be talking to your friend and then hear a scratchy distant voice say:

"...a mouthwatering selection of perfectly roasted meats, can you believe it? And the pie!"

or:

"...wow, that was great incest!"

Then it would stop as mysteriously as it began, and you and your friend would then talk for half an hour about what you heard, your own conversational thread abandoned and forgotten because nothing you say or think is ever as interesting as something secretly overheard.