You can't do it with lexical (my) variables. Symbolic references only work with variables that reside in the symbol table (which lexicals don't). Here's an example:

( $a, $b, $c ) = ( 10, 20, 30 );


$want = 'a';

print $$want, "\n";
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In your eample, you're treating lexicals as if they have symbolic entries in the global symbol table. They just don't. So when you print *{$want}, you're not actually accessing the lexical, $client.