Travis Soule is the man. Whatever he is selling, I say buy it. He asks you for a loan? Get out that checkbook and fork over the loot.

Quit your wincing. I’m not talking about high-finance deals or development issues. You know me better than that. I’m talking about character.

Soule is the man because he took time out of his multimillion-dollar dealing to accommodate one of my strange requests. And it’s not because I was ready to invest my $38 savings into his venture, either. If he was interested in my enormous wealth, he didn’t let on. That’s the kind of character the man has.

I’ll pause in my raving to provide some background. In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to get out to explore some of the unseen places. The nooks, the crannies. Bleak spots that haven’t seen the sun in hundreds of years. Places where spiders reign and normal people have no interest in visiting.

I’ve been snubbed at every turn as I attempt to slither into storm drains or burrow into basements. I give people the creeps. They doubt my motivations.

These days, I suspect I’d have trouble getting into the town dump because my intentions would be questioned. If I were dead, I might not be allowed into a cemetery. Some sexton somewhere would be convinced I was up to no good, and he’d stop me at the gate.

“You ain’t letting that weirdo in my boneyard,” he’d say, scowling around a fat cigar. “Send his carcass back to Park Street where he belongs.”

You think I’m raving. But there is precedent.

I’ve always wanted to visit the sewers deep beneath the city streets and see just what is what down there. I envisioned huge, ancient tunnels burrowing beneath the earth, carrying water and filth to the river. I pictured rats the size of Dobermans, maybe an alligator or two. “X-Files” stuff. Dark, wet, scary stuff.

I wrote a city official and made my pitch. Please, I implored him. I’ll be on my best behavior if you let me tour the underground city. I won’t even holler out to hear the echo roar into the darkness.

His response was polite and professional. Dear, Mark. There are no underground tunnels large enough to walk through. But you’re welcome to come tour the sewage treatment plant.

More recently, I began to admire a downtown house that – wouldn’t you know it? – turned out to be a funeral home. Again, I wrote. I sent the owner of the business a frank and pleading letter. I really like your building, I told him. May I see the interior sometime?

Silence. Not a word in response. Months later, I amended my request: Can I just see the basement, then? You can sneak me in through a bulkhead or something.

The man never wrote back. I surmise from this that even funeral directors think I’m creepy.

So when I wrote to Travis Soule, it was a feeble attempt. The man owns the Cowen Mill and has big plans for it. He conducts milliondollar business deals at lunch and probably golfs with the elite.

But I asked him anyway: May I examine the gutted remains of your building? I promise not to swipe jars of old money and then later claim to have dug it up in my backyard. I promise not to invent stories about kid-eating clowns or vampires hanging from rafters. Blah blah. Thank you in advance. Thanks for nothing.

Soule wrote back the following day. No questions about my dubious intentions, just a fast invitation to come on down. My friends, I wept. I went down to see Soule around the time the falls were raging from the recent rains. We toured the old mill from top to bottom and Soule answered my fifth-grade level questions about it. (“You think there are monsters in here? Or what?”)

I tell you, if someone is going to build a colossal development at the edge of the river, you want it to be someone like Soule, a guy who isn’t skittish about morbid reporters who are interested in shadows instead of dollar figures. You want someone with creative flair. You want someone who has business sense without the self-serving snobbishness that often goes with it. You want someone with character.

Soule has been very good to me in my quest to see the dark, dank places. In keeping with that, I’m not going to mention the things that I saw inside the old mill. You know? I really don’t think I could describe them, anyway.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.