We have studied two-body charmless hadronic decays of R mesons into the fin
al states phiK and phiK(*). Using 9.7 million B (B) over bar pairs collecte
d with the CLEO II detector, we observe the decays B- --> phiK(-) and B-0 -
-> phiK(*0) with the following branching fractions: B(B- --> phiK(-)) = (5.
5(-1.8)(+2.1) +/- 0.6) x 10(-6) and B(B-0 --> phiK(*0)) = (11.5(-3.7-1.7)(4.5+1.8)) x 10(-6). We also see evidence for the decays B-0 --> phiK(0) and
B- --> phiK(*-). However, since the statistical significance is not overwh
elming for these modes, we determine upper limits of < 12.3 x 10(-6) and <
22.5 x 10(-6) (90% confidence level), respectively.